Catalog Adventures in Law and History

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Adventures in Law and History

2nd Edition

Adventures in Law and History Upper-Elementary Grades Take your students on a trip through time to learn about law and civic education through motivating, interactive lessons. Adventures in Law and History Volumes I & II provide upper-elementary teachers with lessons set in American historical eras that introduce law-related concepts including the purpose and function of law, equal protection, and due process. Created in collaboration with elementary teachers, the curriculum provides role plays, simulations, readers theaters and other interactive methods to engage students in learning about history and law and to foster critical-thinking and cooperative-learning skills.

Each unit begins with an introductory lesson to provide students with historical background, followed by a sequence of lessons that send students on an imaginary voyage to the time period. Your students will grapple with law-related issues as they encounter fictional and historical characters and events that require them to apply problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. Each unit culminates with a lesson linking the historical and law-related content to the present and an activity providing an opportunity to engage youth in a service-learning project to build civic responsibility skills.

Both volumes of this illustrated curriculum feature step-by-step teaching procedures and reproducible worksheet and activity masters.

Adventures in Law and History I: Native Americans, the Spanish Frontier, and the Gold Rush

With introductory lessons for each unit to provide students with standards-based historical background.

Unit I: Students visit a Native American Chumash village and discover how rules and laws derived from myth and tradition help the Indians govern tribal life and resolve conflicts.

Unit II: Students meet Luisa, a girl living in a pueblo on the Spanish frontier. There, they explore the concept of property and how law helps resolve conflicts over property.

Unit III: Students experience a hypothetical mining camp in the Gold Rush era and discover what life might be like without effective authority. Students examine the role of the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary.

Adventures in Law and History II: Coming to America, Colonial America, and the Revolutionary Era

With standards-based introductory lessons for each unit to provide students with historical background.

Unit I: Using the methods of historiography, students trace the immigrant origins of five families whose ancestors came to America seeking opportunity and freedom and struggled for equality.

Unit II: Students, through the magic of time travel, visit a hypothetical New England village of the Colonial era and learn essential lessons about due process.

Unit III: Students explore the concepts of authority by helping a tired king rule his kingdom and view the causes of the American Revolution through the eyes of Bostonians as the colonies move toward independence.

Unit IV: Students learn about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship by helping Mr. Madison draft the Bill of Rights and also about the appropriate limits of those rights. Adventures in Law and History:

Can be used separately or in sequence
Are appropriate for ESL and sheltered-English students
Support the California History-Social Science Framework and other elementary social studies course outlines

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