Lending Library

The Center maintains an extensive library of curriculum and lessons for teaching law, civics, government. We have published an Annotated Bibliography of the Library that is available for the asking. My intention is to put on our Annotated Bibliography with search capabilities but I have to figure it out first! In the meantime, I will tell you about new publications and videos to the Lending Library.

Videos

Software

Publications

Lending Library Archive

Video
First Vote is a free, nonpartisan, classroom-based voter education, registration, and citizenship program for high school students. The program helps to educate young people about the importance of citizen participation and voting, and it challenges them to get involved in their communities. First Vote provides the opportunity for students and teachers to discuss what it means to be a citizen in a democratic society and the relationship between voting and the other duties and responsibilities of citizenship.

The Video: The fast-paced 15-minute First Vote video dramatizes the power of voting and citizen participation and includes extensive historical footage focused on struggles for the right to vote -- the suffragists, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam-era passage of the 26th Amendment, which gave 18- to 20-year-olds the right to vote. The video features the music of R.E.M., Aretha Franklin, and rap artist Young M.C. and explains the influence that young people can have on politics and the political arena if they exercise their right to vote. Beyond voting, the video challenges them to get involved with their community and their society by showing them what other students are doing to make a difference. The video has been closed captioned for the hearing impaired.

Teacher's Resource Guide: This concise, easy-to-use curriculum is designed for use with high school seniors, most of whom will be eligible to register to vote during their senior year. It is suitable for use with students of diverse backgrounds and skill levels. Lessons cover a range of topics: attitudes toward voting; voting as a "rite of passage" to adulthood; becoming a contributing member of society; and the struggles for voting rights waged by African Americans, women, and young people.

Click here to view the First Vote Teacher's Resource Guide online. (Requires Acrobat Reader)

Publications

Building A Democratic Nation: Governments in Transition
Published by Close Up Publishing
Grade Level: Junior/Senior High
    Over the past fifty years, the number of democratic nations around the world has jumped from 22 to 120. What are the factors that contributed to this dramatic increase in democratic systems of government?
    Building a Democratic Nation: Governments in Transition examines new and emerging democracies around the world. Surveying the history of democracy from Ancient Greece to modern day governments, Building a Democratic Nation provides explanations and definitions of the major components and tenets of democratic rule, as well as stimulating critical thinking about how varius democracies differ from one another.
    With case studies of transitioning democracies from four different continents, Building a Democratic Nation shows your students how a nation's social and political structures must adapt and change to accommodate governmental reform.

Adventures in Law and History
Published by: Constitutional Rights Foundation,
Grade Level: Upper-Elementary

This new, two-volume curriculum provides upper-elementary teachers with motivating materials for teaching about law and effective citizenship. The lessons, set in American historical eras, engage students in cooperative-learning activities, role plays, simulations, readers theater, stories, and guided discussions, which introduce and reinforce law-related and civic education concepts and skills.
Created in collaboration with upper-elementary teachers, both volumes are designed to meet the educational needs of a multi-cultural student population; emphasize basic, cognitive, and social-skill development; and promote the positive involvement of students in their schools and communities. Both illustrated volumes of this innovative curriculum feature step-by-step teaching procedures, reproducible worksheet and activity masters, lessons linking the historical and law-related content to the present, and service-learning opportunities.

Adventures in Law and History I: Native Americans, the Spanish Frontier, and the Gold Rush
With units on rules and laws, property, and authority

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 how 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 units on equal protection, due process, authority, and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship

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: Student 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. As a conclusion, students create their own Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.

The Fourth Amendment: Search and Seizure
Author: Charles M. Wetterer
Published by Enslow Publishers, Inc.
Grade Level: 6 and up

The Fourth Amendment: Search and Seizure explores the ways in which the Fourth Amendment has affected American citizens throughout the years. With the advent of new and improved technologies, such as cellular telephones and the Internet, the Supreme Court has had to decide how these things affect the application of the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment brings the constitutional amendments to life through the use of personal stories and examples, supports a U.S. government curriculum and brings history into a contemporary context, and each book contains chapter notes, a further reading list and an index.
[This book is part of a larger series "The Constitution" available from Enslow Publishers. They include, The Eighteenth and Twenty-First Amendments; The Fifteenth Amendment; The Fifth Amendment; The First Amendment; The Fourth Amendment; The Nineteenth Amendment; The Second Amendment; and The Thirteenth Amendment.]

Software