Amending the US Constitution - Civics End of Year Project PBL Research Essay

Culminate your American Government & Civics course with this highly scaffolded capstone end-of-course research paper that lets you or your students choose a hotly debated Constitutional issue!

Or conduct one as you study each of the three branches for a fantastic way to deeply develop and track growth in essential social studies skills!

Everything is included, from background knowledge to final editing, for your students to research and argue whether or not to:

• Grant Washington DC statehood (legislative branch)
• Abolish the Electoral College (executive branch
• Impose judicial term limits (judicial branch)

All student materials are highly scaffolded, allow for easy differentiation, and come in both printable PDF and editable Google files.

Greatness is deeply exploring a controversial issue to develop, articulate, and persuade a thoughtful, supported position.

The Constitution, created with enormous foresight, has withstood over 200 years. It’s astounding how few changes have been made to it.

But is it time to make a new one?

Students take on the role of advisors to the President as they research, decide, and support the position they believe the White House should take on a possible new amendment in this compelling PBL-styled research essay.

Each issue connects to the three branches' key powers and structures and some of the biggest current political debates.

This no-prep, highly scaffolded project sets students up for success, regardless of ability, with background info, research and writing forms, and how-to skill sheets.

Two ways to complete these research projects

• As part of each of your three branches units
• To culminate your course with students choose their topic

Each research paper project contains:

Teacher Materials

• Project Overview with student outcomes, skills supported, step-by-step lesson plans, links to Google Doc files, and several ideas and tips for differentiating for all students

Student Materials

• Presidential Memo posing the challenge to students
• Mission Task Check-Off with step-by-step tasks for check-off for the entire project
• Background Readings of historical and modern context with short readings on how amendments are added & the debated issue at hand --complete with processing questions and links to audio recordings of texts
• Constitutional Excerpts of portions of Articles I, II, & III, as well as related Antifederalist Essays and Federalist Papers -- complete with paraphrasing tasks and links to audio recordings of texts
• Select Sources of 4-7 color maps, charts, and other visuals essential to understanding the issue
• Additional Sources with links to 6 pre-vetted, high-quality, and varied sources for students to use to start their independent research
• Research Plan providing brainstorming to keywords use and evidence to find
• Research Home Base organizing and recording research findings
• Source Analysis Forms challenging students to assess sources deeply
• Report Outline Form organizing research into a cohesive and well-built argument before writing the essay
• Report Criteria Rubrics to seven broad research and argumentative writing standards
• How-To Skill Reference Handouts including Annotating a Text, Analyzing Sources, Finding Sources, Creating a Works Cited, Annotating a Citation, Deciding a Precise Position, Creating a Thesis, and Using Supporting Evidence

Standards Supported While standards vary, this project supports the following from various states:

• Analyzes the structures and functions of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches
• Applies critical thinking skills (summarizing, drawing inferences, concluding) to assessing a variety of valid sources, organizing information acquired
• Creates a product on a contemporary government issue using inquiry
• Analyzes/evaluates information, evidence, and counterarguments from primary and secondary sources
• Defends a point of view on a current political issue
• Creates a presentation of social studies information using effective communication, including proper grammar and conventions, proper citations, and methods to avoid plagiarism

Tips from my Classroom

I use this to meet state and district requirements that students conduct a thesis-driven research paper.

We dedicate the last three weeks of our Civics & Government course to this Constitutional Issues research project.

Providing so much scaffolding with the included handouts, tools, and sources makes it easy to differentiate to all ability levels and students, without lessening the challenge!

Brand new to teaching Civics / Government and need everything?

Civics & American Government course bundle teach this inquiry-driven and project-based semester course with confidence!

This listing is for one license for regular, non-commercial classroom use by a single teacher only. Commercial use like online teaching (ex. Outschool) or sharing with other teachers (ex. shared drive, in a Facebook group, in a professional development training) is strictly prohibited.

By purchasing a license to this resource, you have access to all future updates at no cost, available under “My Purchases." Multiple and transferable licenses are available for purchase. PDF files are uneditable, other files have editing abilities, unless otherwise stated. All files are protected under federal copyright laws.

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