First Amendment Bundle

First Amendment Collaborative Poster

The First Amendment is an integral part of the Bill of Rights and is mentioned almost everyday in some form or fashion. It guarantees us some of our most basic freedoms and your students will have fun coloring, collaborating, and discussing their thoughts on the amendment.

When your students enter the room they are each given a piece of the poster, which they will color on and eventually piece together with the rest of their classmates. Each piece of the poster has two different writing prompts. It is up to you how you want to use them. Sometimes I use both and other times I just use one.

Anytime we do these poster in class, my students get excited. They love to color and be able to express themselves artistically and I love the writing portion of the poster. Each hour when my students walk into the room they enjoy reading what the other classes have written. It is a very engaging piece of artwork that you can keep up all year long and reference frequently!

*Final Poster is 5x5, however there are extra pieces of the poster that can be printed off and placed around the border for classes that are larger than 25.

This is a great assignment for an introduction to the First Amendment or as a culminating project. of the year. If you like this one, check out my other Collaborative Posters too, or if you have a suggestion for a poster, please feel free to contact me.

Needs:

8.5 x 11 copy paper

Colored pencils/crayons

Tape

Constitution Articles and Amendments Puzzles

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

This Amendment and Articles Puzzle is a fun way for your students to review as they try and put the puzzle together. This puzzle contains brief descriptions of the 7 Articles of the Constitution and the 27 Amendments. Thre are 29 puzzle pieces in this file.

I print 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.

Included are two puzzles: the first puzzle contains pictures that will help your students get started, the second puzzle is blank except for the descriptions of the amendments and articles.

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Constitution Day: 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 te 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