Designer:  Terry Taylor

Publication Date:  November 1, 2005

Standard (Include analysis skills and language arts standards):  Social Science Content Standard 8.2: Students analyze the political principles underlying the U.S, Constitution and compare the enumerated and implied powers of the federal government.            

Substandard 8.2.1: Discuss the significance of the Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights, and the Mayflower Compact.

Language Arts Grade 8 Standards: 2.0: Reading and Comprehension (Focus on informational materials.)

Learning Outcome/ “Big Idea”/ “Essential Learning” (Objective):  Students will analyze and understand the importance of  the Magna Carta, Mayflower Compact, and the English Bill of Rights in developing our own Constitution and establishing individual rights for the “New Nation.”

TCI Strategies: Verbal Linguistic, Intrapersonal, Interpersonal

EL/Inclusion Strategies:  English Language learners are able to group with students that have more experience and fluency with English. Many of the learners could use more fluent friends to help within the group.

Materials:  American Nation Text, Preview overhead, Handouts of excerpts from documents, processing worksheet, check for Understanding overhead, Overhead projector

Opportunities to Learn/Perform (Procedure): 

 What will students need to do to achieve knowledge and skills identified in standards and learning outcomes?  Students will need to read, interpret and simplify the excerpts to analyze the significance to of these documents to the Constitution. They will also be interacting with other students from their group to interpret documents.

Technology Component:  Overhead projector

Primary sources: Excerpts from the three documents for interpreting.

TCI Resources: 8^th grade TCI text if needed

Other Resources:  Prentice Hall Text, Prentice Hall support CD

Assessment (Description of 2 or more assessment tasks with specific directions, questions, and prompts):   Answered questions from group interaction, group sharing of interpretations, Processing Documents assignment to check understanding of significance to present, and three questions quick check quiz for understanding.

1.     Attach rubric to explain criteria (required): Attached to end pages.

Reflection:

What did student samples reveal?  Student samples revealed the following: (1) Students understood the preview. They were able to write their experiences and relate how early developers of shared powers and individual rights might feel when they were without any power to make changes. (2) Though students really tried hard read and interpret these documents, it became extremely difficult and tiresome to complete, especially the Magna Carta and the Mayflower Compact. Better readers were better able to understand and give some help to lower level readers within their group. (3) The processing assignment was fair. Again, better readers and writers were able to pull ideas from the documents and decide which ones were really important to them. (4) Vocabulary was extremely difficult. Adding a vocabulary list as part of the preview would have been helpful.

What do I need to model, change or adjust regarding criteria, assessment and opportunities to learn?  I need to do the following in order to make this lesson more student friendly:

(1) Preview a Vocabulary list of words students need to know to successfully interpret documents. (2) Underline the major phrases for EL students to focus on for interpretations. (3) Change questions to matching or completion to move through lesson in a period with some homework (lesson took too long for what I wanted students to walk away with, But students did do well remembering the documents.) (4) Provide examples for the processing assignment. (5) Check to see if documents in text match the documents on the Resource CD. Magna Carta on CD were different excerpts than text, Mayflower Compact was same both, and the English Bill of Rights was on the CD but was left out of the text.

Collaboration Rubric

Name Group Collaboration

Handout Designing a Lesson

TCI Approach Lesson Plan

Name(s) Terry Taylor           

Subject   U.S. History                            Grade Level  8th Grade

Title   8.2.1 – The significance of the Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights, and the Mayflower Compact.

Standards-Based Content Objectives

Students will be able to

·       Compare the Magna Carta, Mayflower Compact, and the English Bill of Rights to understand the fundamental principles underlying our Constitution and the Bill of Right.

·       Understand the impact that these important documents have had on forming our own Constitution and personal rights.

Preview Assignment

Response:   Students will respond to a prior experience prompt to understand the significance of the three documents listed.

Multiple Intelligence Strategy

Strategy: Verbal Linguistic, Intrapersonal, Interpersonal

Procedures: Students begin the preview by responding to the short writing prompt:  Most children have played with others in a tree house, fort, playhouse, or doll house. When they played, one or more of the children was in charge. In your fort or playhouse, who was in charge? What were the rules? Who was invited to play? Who was left out?

Allow students time to write their responses. Record some of the responses.  Ask students which rules were fair, which rules were unfair. Who benefited from the rules? Mark recorded responses “F” for fair, “NF” for not fair.

Ask students if the classroom is fair. Make a comparison between the playhouse in their friend’s yard and the teacher’s classroom.

Next, with a shoulder partner, have students imagine that they were a king or a leader of a village. Have the pair discuss how they would rule their land.  Record some of the responses from the pairs of students. Ask if their rules are fair or not fair.

Ask students if their rules changed as they began to acknowledge some of the rules in their friends fort and the teacher’s classroom were not always fair. Answers will vary, however some students will not be willing to share any power.  Introduce the concept that others wanted the power to be shared and rules fairer.

Textbook page numbers or handouts:

The text book is the American Nation, pages 57, 70, 72, 644, and 656.

I can make this text more considerate by:

Creating pages with the document excerpts and the reading notes all on one page. I used the American Nation CD primary sources to copy  the Magna Carta and Mayflower Compact excerpts onto a page, then added my questions for reading notes. The CD had the excerpts for the English Bill of Rights which the text did not have. I added some clip art to give some visual clue to the event.

Graphically-Organized Reading Notes

Student will be reading excerpt of the Magna Carta, Mayflower Compact, and the English Bill of Rights. Students are arranged in mixed ability pairs or groups of three, to read and simplify the excerpts of the documents. Students will have the considerate text hand out and the page numbers in text to aid them in their efforts.

Processing Assignment

Students will assume they are living in the time period of at least one of the documents (Magna Carta 1215, Mayflower Compact 1620, and English Bill of Rights). Students will then write in their historical journal the changes in life the document will provide for the common citizen. Journals are to include changes they feel are the most important and how that has affected their life during that time period (before and after). On the right side of their paper students graphically illustrate their chosen excerpts to show understanding and importance of the document.                                      

1.     Textbook – American Nation

2.     Student Notebook.

3.     Over head Projector.

4.     Student Handouts (Documents)

5.     Graphically Organized Reading Notes Handout

6.     Optional – Computer and Projector to display pictures

Most children have played with others in a tree house, fort, playhouse, or doll house. When they played, one or more of the children was in charge. In your fort or playhouse, who was in charge? What were the rules? Who was invited to play? Who was left out?

Magna Carta, 1215

The signing of the Magna Carta was an essential step in the development of constitutional

Government in England. The Magna Carta’s guarantees of legal and political

rights also formed the basis of government in the English colonies.

1. That the English church shall be free, and shall have her rights entire, and her liberties

inviolate; . . .

2. We also have granted to all the freemen of our kingdom, for us and for our heirs forever,

all the underwritten liberties, to be had and holden by them and their heirs, of us and our

heirs forever. . . .

39. No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or diseased, or outlawed, or banished, or in

any way destroyed, nor will we pass upon him, nor will we send upon him, unless by the lawful

judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.

40. We will sell to no man, we will not deny to any man, either justice or right.

41. All merchants shall have safe and secure conduct to go out of, and to come into,

England, and to stay there and to pass as well by land as by water, for buying and selling by

the ancient and allowed customs, without any unjust tolls, except in time of war, or when they

are of any nation at war with us. . . .

42. It shall be lawful, for the time to come, for anyone to go out of our kingdom and return

safely and securely by land or by water, saving his allegiance to us (unless in time of war, by

some short space, for the common benefit of the realm).

63. . . . It is also sworn as well on our part as on the part of the barons, that all the things

aforesaid shall be observed in good faith, and without evil duplicity. Given under our hand, in

the presence of the witnesses above named, and many others, in the meadow called

Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, the 15th day of June, in the 17th year of our

reign.

The Mayflower Compact

In 1620, the Mayflower anchored in what is now Provincetown Harbor off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Before the landing, 41 male passengers on the ship signed a binding agreement that set up a basis for self-government. This document became known as the Mayflower Compact.

In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of the dread sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland king, defender of the faith, etc.

Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic; for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends afore said; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony: unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.

In witness whereof we have here under subscribed our names at Cape Cod the 11 of November, in the year of the reign of our sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini 1620.

1

English Bill of Rights, 1689

During the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Catholic King James II fled Britain, and

Parliament offered the throne to his Protestant daughter Mary and her husband,

William of Orange. Parliament insisted that William and Mary first accept a Bill of

Rights affirming the rights of Parliament and the British people. Whereas, the late King James II . . . did endeavor to subvert and extirpate [eliminate] the Protestant religion and the laws and liberties of this kingdom . . . and whereas the said late King James II having abdicated the government, and the throne being vacant . . . the said lords [Parliament] . . being now assembled in a full and free representative [body] of this nation . . . do in the first place . . . declare:

1. That the pretended power of suspending of laws or the execution of laws by real authority without consent of Parliament is illegal; . . .

4. That levying money for or to the use of the crown by pretense of prerogative [right] with-out grant of Parliament . . . is illegal;

5. That it is the right of the subjects to petition the king, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal.

6. That . . . raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law . . .

8. That election of members of Parliament ought to be free. . . .

9. That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be

impeached [challenged as to the validity thereof] or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament. . . .

10. That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. . . .

13. And that, for redress of all grievances and for the amending, strengthening, and preserving of the laws, Parliaments ought to be held frequently. . . .

Check for Understanding

The document created by the Pilgrims to provide a legal basis for their colonies was called the

a. Constitution.

b. Mayflower Compact.

c. Covenant.

d. Holy Experiment.

What was the main feature of the Magna Carta?

a. Monarchs continued to enjoy the benefits of absolute power,

b. Rulers should not be responsible for making people follow the law

c. Kings and Queens were required to obey the laws of the land,

d. Parliament was set up different from the American Congress.

Which set of words BEST completes the following paragraph?

Each colony developed its own government, but the governments had much in common. Colonists took great pride in their ____ and valued the rights that the ____ gave them as English subjects.

a. exports; customs officials    c.         documents; summons

b. mercantilism; colonists        d.         elected assemblies; Magna Carta