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The Pack contains associated resources for the learning experience, typically in the form of articles and videos. There is a teacher Pack (with only teacher information) and a student Pack (which contains only student information). As a teacher, you can toggle between both to see everything.
Here are the teacher pack items for The Texas Constitution:
Overview In this experience, students view the first page of the Texas Constitution of 1876 and make observations about it. Then they review the seven principles of the U.S. and Texas Constitutions. Next they examine some of the rights in the Texas Bill of Rights, and they explain the importance of one of those rights. Finally they choose an Article or Amendment and paraphrase it. Estimated duration: 45-55 minutes Vocabulary words: Objectives
Governments often need a written plan. That plan helps explain how leaders should use their power, how decisions should be made, and how people should be treated fairly.
Before you learn about Texas’s written plan for government, think about why a place might need to write a plan down.Why might a state need a written plan for how its government should work? Post one or more ideas in the table.
After Reconstruction, many Texas leaders wanted a new written plan for the government. They set out to write a state constitution. A constitution is a written plan for how a government works and what rights people have. To write this new Constitution, several people, known as delegates, met in 1875 to write the new Constitution. Texas voters approved it in 1876. It is still the Texas Constitution today, although it has been changed many times through amendments.
Objectives
The first page of the Texas Constitution of 1876
Use this scene to introduce the idea that a government needs a written plan for how it should work. Focus student thinking on why a state would need that kind of plan, not on details of the full Texas Constitution. After students respond to the prompt, explain that this written plan for government is called a constitution. The image may be used as a visual example of a real constitution, but students do not need to read or analyze the document in this scene. Help students think about these ideas: If students need support, ask follow-up questions such as: The main goal of this scene is for students to understand the purpose of a constitution before they study the Texas Constitution itself in later parts of the lesson.
