Teaching about the Bill of Rights, Constitution, and Declaration of Independence

I whipped out these posters when I was subbing in a 4th grade class a while back.  I find that simple visuals like these are very effective.  We also discussed them as a class in more detail but this was an easy way for them to remember each important document.

Wax Museum Report

I am subbing in 5th grade right now and we are introducing a new project tomorrow - The Wax Museum!  Two of my kids have already done this project and my last one is participating this year. 

The students are each assigned a famous American for their project.  They make a poster board with pictures, a stamp, quotes, etc. and also create a five paragraph written report.  This project takes a few weeks to complete.  The grand finale is Wax Museum day where each student dresses up as their famous American and stand in front of their tri-fold poster board display.  Other students, teachers, and parents come and listen to each student talk about themselves as if they were that character.  It is really fun!

I need to explain to the students how to use 3x5 notecards to collect information for their report.  We'll start the researching tomorrow so to make things very clear, I made this handout with details about how to do them exactly.  (I REALLY don't want to explain the same thing over and over and over again).  It will print 2 per page and the kids will label each of their 10 postcards per subject with the appropriate topic and highlighted color.  I also pre-counted the notecards and put them in sandwich ziplocks so I could avoid the chaos of sorting them at school.  When their regular teacher comes back she'll explain how she'd like them to do the introduction and conclusion.  

Vietnam War Project

My junior high age son did an awesome "scrapbook" project on the Vietnam War.  He did a thorough job in his research but I would still double check the facts if you are looking for official information and we took a lot of the pictures off of google so some of them may be copyrighted.  I know other students may be tempted, but please don't copy the report because that would be cheating, right?

I helped him with the layout and  graphics (thank you Stampin' Up for the great background pages) but the thoughts and writings are his own.  The pretend newspaper article is something that really happened to our family in July 2008 in Washington D.C. but I changed the names since I don't put our private info "out there."   I highly recommend that everyone takes their children to Washington D.C. at some point in their childhood if they can pull it off.  Best trip of our lives.

I sure wish I had really studied this war earlier in my life (or paid more attention in school).  I wonder if the war was too "raw" and controversial to discuss since it ended when I was in elementary school.  I had so many Vietnamese students at my high school whose parents had escaped from Vietnam after the war.  We called them "boat people" since they arrived on boats and I honestly didn't give much thought as to why they wanted to come to America.  In hindsight, I wish I had been more sensitive and compassionate to their plight, or the plight of their parents.

Enjoy!