Subject: Civics, History, Social Studies

Lesson Length: 1 hour

Topic: Analyzing Primary Source Documents

Grade Level: 4, 6, 7, 8

Standards / Framework:

Brief Description: Students will develop an understanding of the Bill of Rights and how it impacts their lives.

Know Before You Start: Students should have an understanding of what a democracy is, our basic freedoms, and the difference between a right and a responsibility.

Hook:

  • Have students write down three things they enjoy doing when they get home from school. Collect five popular responses from the class and then tell the students they are not allowed to do two of them any more. For example, "You can no longer watch TV or play video games when you get home from school."
  • Have students discuss why they feel they should have the right to continue to do these things.
  • Introduce the Bill of Rights and the reasons the colonists felt this was important to include in their newly written Constitution.

Activity:

  • Using the sample comic as a guide, have student create a comic to showcase one of the rights found in the Bill of Rights.
    • Illustrate and explain the amendment.
    • Depict a scenario of how this right impacts your life or the lives of people around you.

Closure:

  • Display completed comics, either digitally or printed, and place them in order from the first amendment through the tenth.
  • Have students complete a gallery walk to view all the different amendments and how they can impact their lives.

Differentiation:

  • Allow students to use the speech-to-text feature.

  • Allow students to work with a peer model.

  • Provide example scenarios for students to use in their comic.

  • Provide sentence frames as needed.

  • Allow students to use the voiceover feature to read their comics aloud.

Resources:

  • Comic to print or display: Comic.