The Bill of Rights in the 21st Century

TIPC Ratings

Research and Information Fluency: Students created a focus question and chose a real contemporary issue where the Bill of Rights was used to measure and provide for the rights of 21st Century Americans through the use of One Search which includes sites such as Issues and Controveries. The mulitple databases offer students a wide range of places to search and the MLA citation was provided at the conclusion of the articles to insure ethical use of information.

Communication and Collaboration: Student groups were created to promote collaboration on this project. Each student chose a task to perform for the good of the whole group. One student was the leader, one the computer guru, one the rubric checker, and one the spelling/ gramarian. Two class periods were provided for group/team discussion and collaboration following research. Two full class periods were given for the making of the voicethread. Collaboration is the main ingredient to making a voicethread.

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving: Students researched and analyzed the strength and viability of the Bill of Rights in the 21st Century as it is applied to a current social or civic issue of their choice. Students found their social problem from a variety of databases. Student groups had to agree on which problem and then which amendment to analyze. Students were asked to address open-ended questions and in addressing real world problems reflect on extremely complex 21st Century problems.

Creativity and Innovation: Although all students used Voicethread for the first time in this lesson they created different products by choosing their delivery style, content and commentary. They chose to produce a newscast, an advertisement, a debate, or some other presentation method while using the same technology platform as their classmates. Technology choices were also available in Voicethread as they choose to insert pictures, drawings, videos they make or videos they borrow for their visuals for commentary. Their commentary was in their own words and from their own perspective based on the strong research of their chosen topic and collaboration with their team members.
Group norms were established by students signing up for specific tasks within the group. Leaders, gramarians, gurus,and rubric checkers had a sense of the importance of their role within the group thus taking ownership for the work of the group.