Constitution Bundle

Get all of my lessons, notes, and puzzles in this bundle!

6 Goals of the Constitution Flashcards

These flashcards are an easy way to teach your students about the 6 goals of the Constitution as well as the meanings of the goals. Your students can cut them out and quickly learn about these important parts of the Constitution.

Preamble to the Constitution Puzzle

Great for your tactile learners! Your students won’t realize they are reviewing or studying while they are working on this puzzle!

This Preamble to the Constitution Puzzle is challenging. Each piece contains a small phrase from the Preamble and it must be connected to another piece that contains next phrase. Your students must connect the last word of the phrase on a piece to the first word of the phrase on another piece. It is both challenging and fun. This file contains two puzzles. One without pictures that is a little more difficult and one with pictures that can help

I print these out on card stock or laminate each one of these puzzles. To save time I will have the students cut them out and that also gives them the ability to preview the puzzle before hand.

Then throughout my lessons over these topics I will periodically pass these out and give them 5-10 minutes to try and put them together. I will have races and time the students.

With the help of these quizzes, clips, songs, worksheet, PowerPoint, and test your students will learn the Preamble to the Constitution!

Preamble to the Constitution Lesson Plans

This lesson provides your students with an introduction to the Preamble to the Constitution.

The PowerPoint Presentation contains

4 video clips

1-Barney Fife "reciting" the Constitution

2-John Boehner getting confused about the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence

3-Schoolhouse Rock song over the Constitution. This helped my students learn the Preamble!

4-This clip from Dailymotion.com provides your students with a modern look at what the terms used in the Preamble mean. This clip helped my students to be able to better define the key terms from the document.

Also included in this file are 3 Fill in the Blank Quizzes over the Preamble with word banks. For some students I give them a word bank and for others I don't. It just depends on their level.

There is also a Fill in the Blank Preamble Test that I give at the end of the week.

Also included is a fun worksheet called "License Plate Preamble" where the students decode personalized license plates and write the Preamble to the Constitution. I have used this at the beginning of the lesson as a previewing activity and also at the end as a closing activity.

Lastly the PowerPoint includes a couple slides that show different ways the Preamble has been displayed or used (t-shirts, songs, wordle, art) and I challenge my students to come up with their own way to display the Preamble. I've made this an extra credit assignment in the past and I have also used it as a daily grade.

With the help of these quizzes, clips, songs, worksheet, PowerPoint, and test your students will learn the Preamble to the Constitution!

The Preamble to the Constitution Puzzle is also a fun way to review for students!

Hands on History Bill of Rights Constitution Puzzle

I use this Constitution and Bill of Rights Puzzle as a way to review the major ideas and people from the document. There are 15 pieces to the puzzle.

I print out the puzzle on card stock or laminate it (so they last longer), and cut it out. I put each of the pieces in their own little bag. Then I pass out each bag to the students. I will use this puzzle periodically throughout my unit over the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The first time I will give the students 5-10 minutes to see how much they can do. Then I'll shorten the time as we learn more about it. By the end of my unit I have puzzle races and time the students. I record their times and push them to try and beat them.

It is a fun way for them to review and try and piece the document together and it is great for your tactile learners as well.

Constitution Notes and PowerPoint

Guided fill in the blank notes covering Shays' Rebellion, the Constitutional Convention, Great Compromise, 3/5 Compromise, and slavery in the United States following the Revolutionary War.

Included are blank copies for the students notes as well as a teacher copy with the blanks filled in. This file includes a Keynote and PowerPoint version for Mac and PC users. Accompanying the notes are 15 questions as well as the answer key.

These notes and presentations provide students with a basic understanding of the debates that took place after the Articles of Confederation had failed to govern the nation.

Constitution Day First Amendment Activity-Fight for the Right!

I use this each year for my activity on Constitution Day. The kids love it because there is a lot of discussion, debating, and it deals with something they can relate to. I love it for the same reason.

The lesson begins with me asking them what would happen if we had to choose just one of the freedoms from the Constitution. I hold four rounds of voting where the class determines which of the freedoms (speech, press, assembly, petition, or religion) they want to eliminate.

Between each round I have a timer I set which gives them time to discuss which liberty to eliminate while I walk around the room and listen and question their thinking. Next I have another timer that allows them to write. Throughout the entire lesson they are discussing, writing, then debating. Once we vote I then ask the students to defend their position and provide reasons for the elimination of one of the 5 freedoms. Many times I don't have to say anything except "Does anyone disagree with what was just said?"

By the end of the lesson once the students are down to two (my class almost always has speech and religion left) and they have to decide they begin to see how all of these lessons are intertwined and the loss of one impacts another.

My students have told me this is one of their favorite lessons of the year and at least one student from each class asks if we can do more stuff like this in class! There are 17 slides and I rarely get through the EXTENSION questions at the end. It could easily be used over a two day period or if you are on 90 minute schedules you could accomplish the whole thing.

*This includes a PowerPoint Presentation as well as a link to Make a Copy of the GOOGLE SLIDES presentation I use with my class.

Check out Make History Fun for more resources