CEP Lesson Plan Form

Teacher: Dylan Delehoy

4/20/16 - 4/22/16
School:
RMHS
Government

Date:
Grade Level: 11/12

Content Area:

Title: Civil Rights Court Case Chain Activity

Lesson #: 3 of 5

Content Standard(s) addressed by this lesson:

directly from the standard)

(Write Content Standards

Content Area: Social StudiesStandard: 4.2 Civics

Prepared Graduates: Analyze origins, structure, and functions of governments and
their impacts on societies and citizens
Evidence Outcomes:
f. Analyze how court decisions, legislative debates, and various and diverse groups
have helped to preserve, develop, and interpret the rights and ideals of the
American system of government (DOK 2-3)
g. Evaluate the effectiveness of our justice system in protecting life, liberty, and
property (DOK 3-4)
Inquiry Questions: (Essential questions relating knowledge at end of the unit of
instruction, select applicable questions from standard)
What would society look like if several landmark court cases had been decided
differently?
How have minority groups used the court system to fight for their rights?
Concepts and skills students master: (Understandings, Big Ideas, Unit
objectives)
The role of the court system in our government
How important legal precedent has, and continues, to impact our society
Evidence Outcomes: (Knowledge/ Skills, Lesson Objectives)
Every student will be able to: Each student will analyze one civil rights court
case from the provided article to identify the main issue, the existing precedent, the
main arguments in the case, and whether the case upheld or changed the
precedent. They will then give an informative presentation on their findings.

Colorado State University College of Health and Human Sciences

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CEP Lesson Plan Form

Assessment of Evidence Outcomes: (How will you assess the selected lesson
objectives (general explanation, you will go into more detail at the end of the lesson
plan)
Students will be assessed on their analysis of the court cases through group
presentations using the rubric attached

Colorado State University College of Health and Human Sciences

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CEP Lesson Plan Form

Planned Lesson Activities

Activity Name

Should be a creative title for you and the children to associate with the activity.
Civil Rights Court Case Chain

Approx. Time

How long do you expect the activity to last?

The activity will carry over three days with the introduction/background on the first day, student
work time on the next, and presentations/discussion on the third.

Anticipatory
Set

The hook to grab students attention. These are actions and statements by the teacher to
relate the experiences of the students to the objectives of the lesson, To put students into a
receptive frame of mind.
Students will do a think-pair-share with a partner about last nights homework about what is
precedent, and what is the legal process for court cases.

Teaching/
Presentation:

Includes: Input, Modeling and Checking for Understanding

1. Input: Background on all of the court cases the students will be analyzing
2. Modeling: After the background of the cases, I will introduce the activity and present an
example court case including all of the required elements
3. Checking for Understanding: Before getting students into groups, I will put the rubric up
on the board and ask if there are any questions about what is required, and then do a
thumbs-up/thumbs-down of whether they are ready to begin
4. Questioning Strategies: Most of the questioning will come during class discussion on
presentation day. For each case I will ask what was the existing precedent, how did each
side frame their argument, what impact did the case have on civil rights, and how might
things be different if the case was decided differently?

(Select the most

appropriate
teaching model.)
-cooperative
learning
-inquiry

Teaching
Strategy:
Guided Practice
&
Differentiation

An opportunity for each student to demonstrate grasp of new learning by working through an
activity or exercise under the teachers supervision. The teacher moves around the room to
determine level of mastery and to provide individual remediation as need. (Praise, Prompt, and
Leave)
Students will be broken up into groups of three to work on a court case. They will read the
provided material and work together to build a presentation on their case.

Colorado State University College of Health and Human Sciences

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CEP Lesson Plan Form

Teaching
Strategy:
(Independent
Practice)

(This may not come immediately following each lesson)

Once students have mastered the content or skill, it is time to provide for reinforcement
practice. It is provided on a repeating schedule so that the learning is not forgotten. It may be
homework or individual work in class. It can be utilized as an element in a subsequent project. It
should provide for relevant situationnot only the context in which it was originally learned.
On presentation day, students will be taking notes and discussing how each case played a role in
African American civil rights. As a class we will complete the chain of precedent leading up to
Brown v. Board of Education.

Closure

Those actions or statements by a teacher that are designed to bring a lesson presentation to an
appropriate conclusion. Used to help students bring things together in their own minds, to make
sense out of what has just been taught. Any Questions? No. OK, lets move on is not closure.
Closure will come on the final presentation day where as a class we will complete and discuss
the chain of precedent set by these civil rights cases before moving on to the next half of the
civil rights unit.

Materials

Accommodatio
ns
&
Modifications

Assessment

What do you need to do the activity?

There are 10 articles, one for each case students will be analyzing
Students will need their laptops in order to build their group presentations
To modify: If the activity is too advanced for a child, how will you modify it so that they can be
successful?
To extend: If the activity is too easy for a child, how will you extend it to develop their emerging
skills?
What accommodations will need to be implemented and for what students?
Students have been placed into groups in order to modify the lesson. There are two groups who
will be given shorter and more succinct articles to read, and those students will be receiving
individualized literacy coaching from an ISS instructor in the class. The more advanced students
will conduct deeper analysis on their court cases by researching some of the precedent behind
them and how that influenced the rulings.
How will you record the childs challenges and successes with this activity? (Even if this is
written within your lesson plan, specifically state it here. How will you know the students have
met the objective? Attach a copy if applicable.)

Colorado State University College of Health and Human Sciences

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CEP Lesson Plan Form

Students will be assessed on their presentations and whether they included the main issue, the
existing precedent, the arguments from both sides, and whether or not the case upheld or
changed the existing precedent.

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CEP Lesson Plan Form

Post Lesson Reflection

1. To what extent were lesson objectives achieved? (Utilize
assessment data to justify your level of achievement)
The outcome of this lesson was much lower than I would have liked with
the class average sitting right around a 72%. I believe the main reason for
this to be the fact that senior ditch day took place on the day the
activity was introduced to the class. 16 of the 30 students were absent,
and more than half of them did not put in any work outside of class to
make up for the missed work day. Since students were assessed on their
presentations alone, their grades did suffer from the apparent lack of
effort. I did spend an extensive amount of time in-between presentations
to fill in the gaps and make sure that students could get the main points
down in their notes to use to study for the unit exam. Once the scores on
the exam are assessed, then we can determine if we need to spend any
time re-teaching the topic before the final exam.
2. What changes, omissions, or additions to the lesson would
you make if you were to teach again?
Without a doubt, I will spend more time planning the lesson in the
schedule to make sure that there arent any unforeseen circumstances
that might affect the assessment. Also, making sure to give students
more notice, and perhaps making the activity worth even more points to
dissuade students from blowing it off. As of now, I dont believe that any
major changes to the lesson itself need to be made as I ran this lesson
with a different class last quarter with much better results.

3. What do you envision for the next lesson? (Continued practice,

reteach content, etc.)
The next lesson is going to pick up and extend the narrative past the main
civil rights movement. We have traced the precedent backwards in history
from the main case that kicked off the civil rights movement (Brown), now
we are going to look at what happened after victories such as the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. We will also be
extending the students knowledge of civic participation and activism by
looking groups like the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam and the role
they played in the post-civil rights movement.

Colorado State University College of Health and Human Sciences

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