Basic American Government Semester Plan Adjustments

Boundary Stone’s Basic American Government Teacher’s Guide lays out assignments for an 18-week semester. Every situation is different, and you may need a different number of days of assigned work. How could you approach adjusting that schedule to a co-op situation with fewer days of assignments? Here are some tips from a former co-op teacher who used this textbook.

There are some questions to ask yourself.

• What do you want the workload/schedule to be?
• How many days per week, or better yet what are the total number of days you would make assignments for when you consider holidays, etc.
• How many times would you meet together as a class in the semester?
• Would they take quizzes/tests at home or in class?
• Will you have students complete the Policy Research Project that the TG sets aside Mondays to work on?
• To be honest, you know some students, left to their own choice, will do the entire week’s assignments on one day, and will try to find ways to avoid reading the textbook.

Here are some thoughts of ways to reduce the number of assigned days of assignments.

• Before your first meeting they should read the 1st chapter and do the assignments from the 1st four lessons that you consider important. In the first class, discuss the “political crisis” and the roles of “democracy and capitalism.” Focus on encouraging them to develop a good routine to complete the work. Chapter 1 pdf is on our website, so no excuse in case they don’t get their book in time.
• You could skip the diagnostic tests. They are not intended to count toward their grade and are ten questions from the unit exam they will take later at the end of the unit. The purpose is to show them there are things they don’t currently know but will learn. May or may not be helpful.

The way I would look at it is to think of each unit taking one forth of your total weeks, or one fourth of your class days. I would divide up the unit into chunks to equal the number of weeks you will focus on it and combine or adjust assignments. Consider what you want to spend time talking about in your class times and combine some of the TG lessons and think about which assignments/activities you might skip. For instance, you could skip the Declaration Paraphrase, and instead talk about its structure, and a few specifics for a bit in class.

Consider the load by the number of pages you are having them read. If you have time to look them over, you might consider a few of the review questions you can let them skip. A few chapters are very short (8 & 15 come to mind).

It will be easier in Units 2 & 3 to figure out just one or two places to combine assignments. Units 1 & 4 may take a little more thought. But don’t be afraid to skip a few of the extra assignments, and maybe even a review question here or there. The TG skips some of the background info in chapters 3-5 already.

The TG lesson plan skips chapter 2 until after you go over all the background history, as Dr. Carson suggests as an option. Chapter 2 is the important one as it focuses on the Constitution itself and sets students up well for future issues that will be discussed. You should consider what you are going to want them to get out of that chapter and use the others as support/background for that.

A note about chapter 1 – Dr. Carson uses some unfamiliar terms in the first chapter. Most are listed in the study guide so that students focus on learning to understand them. There is not as much of that beyond that chapter. I typically heard complaints from some students. Be prepared for having a positive response to challenge them to use these opportunities to prepare for college and beyond, and to not be intimidated by authors who use terms that are less common now than when they wrote. Acknowledge that language does change over time, but we cannot let that intimidate us from learning all we can from previous generations.

The day they take the Unit test, you can assign the first lesson in the next unit as well. The tests generally only take 20-30 minutes or less for most students.

Some lessons easily combine. The Law is broken down into four lessons, but I often combined the third & fourth to make it three lessons. You could also spend one day instead of two on Washington’s Farewell.

A lot just depends on the students and how diligent they are. Each class I taught had its own personality and tackled things a little differently. But we all had many days of good discussions that sparked some curiosity, which led to appreciating why it’s all important.