Abstract:
This unit begins with a compilation of researched information dealing with Congress. This information is formatted into a language easily understood by high school students. Such topics covered in this unit are the election of representatives to Congress, the organization of Congress, the duties of a legislator, and the process by which legislation is enacted. The information is followed by several enrichment activities. Some of these activities are designed to help the students develop a better understanding of Congress and the before mentioned topics, while other activities require the students to employ higher level thinking skills to this basic information. Some of these activities include writing a bill and enacting a mock Senate to see whether or not the bill becomes a law, and writing an actual letter of concern to a local Congressman. I have included some actual samples of student work in this area.These enrichment activities vary greatly in their degrees of difficulty. While this makes the unit more practical for future use, it also serves its purpose presently. I am student teaching this Spring semester of 1995 in a high school government class. I employed portions of this unit in one general class and one remedial class. This is the source of my student work.My supervising teacher reported this area of study as a problem area for her remedial classes in the past. Therefore, I feel as if this unit was very beneficial for the students. I have evaluated my success with this remedial class, in particular, by discussing the effects of the use of my developed unit with my supervising teacher. She thought that the content was presented most definitely in a very thorough, yet creative way. I have also noticed the positive results of this unit when evaluating a pre-test and a post-test that I administered to the students. There were definite areas of improvement. Overall, I enjoyed developing this unit. However, I enjoyed teaching this unit even more. These remedial students really need the type of "hands-on" activities provided for in this unit. I am very happy that I could provide such a wide array of activities for these students in a most important subject that I believe is sometimes neglected.
