March 6 - 10

This week, we'll practice reading and interpreting legal documents and language, as well as getting familiar with landmark Supreme Court cases that affect many areas of American life (and make great evidence/examples for argument and synthesis essays).  Additionally, this unit satisfies the 11th-12th grade standards for Informational Reading specify that students should be able to delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal U.S. texts, including the application of constitutional principles and use of legal reasoning (e.g., in U.S. Supreme Court majority opinions and dissents) and the premises, purposes, and arguments in works of public advocacy (e.g., The Federalist, presidential addresses).

Students will work in groups, but still have their own individual writing assignments.  (Please see the Supreme Court Project document for details.) 

MONDAY: Journal warm-up.  Overview of Supreme Court Project.  Divide into groups, choose cases.  Work with your group on laptops to research and discuss your case, and your individual written assignment in class. 

Due: 30 pages of independent reading.  (We will be writing about the independent reading books soon.)

Homework: Finish typing up the rough draft of your individual portion of the written Supreme Court case project.

WEDNESDAY: Journal warm-up.  Brief Supreme Court group meeting, share drafts and discuss.  Return in-class essays and go over results.  College and Career Center presentation about the ACT and SAT.  

Due: Rough draft of individual Supreme Court case assignment. 

Homework:  Revise and edit the draft of your individual portion of the written Supreme Court case project.  Bring a hard copy of the final draft, either neatly written or typed, to class on Friday.

FRIDAY: Journal warm-up.  Supreme Court Case group presentations.  Turn in hard copy of individual written Supreme Court assignment.  Take notes on other presentations.  Take open-note quiz about the cases afterwards.  Receive a copy of Vocabulary List #17 for next week's quiz. 

Due: Hard copy (paper copy) of the final draft, either neatly written or typed, to class on Friday.

Homework: Read 30 more pages of your independent reading book.  (That brings you up to 180 pages since the beginning of the semester.  For longer books such as Steve Jobs, The Shining, and especially Atlas Shrugged, you'll want to double the page count so that you're ready to write about these books.)