Teacher Process
Teaching Process:
Here are a few helpful hints:
Divide your class into the three branches before you begin this webquest. I suggest you break your class down into similar proportions:
20 students:
Legislative Branch - (3 groups of 4) 8 Representatives and 4 Senators
Executive Branch - 1 President and 3 Cabinet Members
Judicial Branch - 1 Chief Justice and 3 additional Justices
Simulation Instructions:
1. Provide new vocabulary to the class that might be necessary
for the activity, such as:
constitutionality: whether a law
follows the guidelines
set by the
veto: the power of the president
to overturn a new law
bill: a law proposed by
legislators
2. Tell students that they are going to represent the different
branches of government and pass their own laws.
3. Divide students into the three branches of government.
4. Give the students in the judicial branch a copy of the United
States Constitution. 5. Divide the “legislative
branch” group into three smaller groups
and explain that each of the groups will propose its own bill to
the passed into
law. 6. Begin the lawmaking process for
all three bills by having students
get out their pencils and paper and propose a law. Explain that
their new laws will have to get approval from the president, just
as a real law would.
7. Allow students sufficient time to write their laws.
8. Gather the bills that have been passed by the legislature and
pass them on to the president. If all three bills make it out of the
legislature, advise the president to veto at least one of the bills so
that students may become familiar with the veto process.
9. Hand the newly passed laws to the judicial branch to consider
the law’s constitutionality.
10. Post the laws that passed all three branches of government
in a prominent place in the classroom.
After the students have
completed their project, ask:
Did any of
the bills you proposed not become a law?
Why did the bill not become a law?
Did the system of checks and balances work?
Do you think it works in real life?