Constitutional History

Every year I teach this subject in fourth grade, and I always find it very difficult for them to actually understand and comprehend. We go over what the Constitution is and what its role in the Government is. Since this is basically their first introduction to the Constitution we mainly focus on the three branches of Govt. and their rolls, and the Bill of Rights. We talk about why our founding fathers felt the need for this Constitution and why they included things in it that they did. We also talk about the reasoning for the Bill of Rights and why they were included. They enjoy the fact that there was such an argument about them being included.

I feel that a good basic understanding of the Constitution is very important since they will be expanding on this subject every year for the rest of their educational career and it has such an impact on their every day life. I try to express to them how important this document is and how it basically directs about everything that they do in their life. We also talk about how interesting that the Constitution is a document that is over 200 years old and we still use it with such importance. Most of us don't even have cars that are more than 10 years old.

African American History

Currently the teaching of African American history in itself is not a major part of my fourth grade curriculm. But, I find it virtually impossible to teach a room full of students without touching on the subject at least a few times a year due to questions or current events. I cannot say that we do a large unit on slavery in fourth grade, but due to the fact that Kansas is a large part of the standards in fourth grade we do teach it to an extent due to the large part that slavery played in the early days of Kansas. We talk about the different views that people had of African American's during the period of the 1860's. We also talk about the time of civil rights. We compare how people viewed African American's during this time versus the Civil War time period. We talk about how these events affect them today and what they think about the things that happened to African Americans in history. African American history is taught more in fifth grade, so I just give an intorduction to this part of history.

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Originally uploaded by colvinclass.