Syllabus Week 2 (11 of Semester)

Lesson: Political Participation
Time: 3:45 min
Unit 2
Week: 11 Dates: 4/2-4/6

Objectives:
1. To analyze the main political parties beliefs and platforms
2. to apply the ideas of the various political parties in a practical manner
Standards:
3.2.2 – Identify and analyze issues concerning the national interests of the United States
4.3 – know how citizens can exercise their rights

Materials:
Textbook: U.S. Government, Democracy in Action-Bring Friday
Mon/Tues 4/2 or 4/3

1. Reflection Question: Do you believe, it is more important to loyally support a political party and their platform or only vote for candidates based on a few, important issues (10 minutes).

2. Analyze survey results (45 minutes). Group questions:

a. Qualitative Analysis-Do you think your applicants matched their political identity very well, fairly well, somewhat confused, very confused.

b. Quantitative Analysis-Give a point for each question that they answered that parallels their political affiliation. Subtract a point for each answer that does not match or parallel their political affiliation.

c. Which question(s) had the highest rate of dissonance (lack of parallel)?

d. Which question(s) had the highest rate of resonance (parallel)?

e. What was the question that had the most drastic answers (one way or another) overall?

f. Find someone else in your group or the class that has a similar or the same question. Compare your results (based on two of the demographic factors [race, gender, etc].

g. Which answer showed the highest level of disagreement (variance) within a political party?

h. Based on what you know of the “left” and “right” description of politics, place each political party’s results on a left to right scale. Be sure to include a center on your scale.

i. Were any questions difficult for participants to answer that perhaps could have been reworded or discarded altogether?

3. Political Socialization and Public Opinion chart (20 minutes)

4. Measuring Public Opinion –Lecture (20 minutes)

5. Homework-Vocab: 16-30 –due Friday.


Wed/Thurs 4/4 or 4/5

1. Supreme Court Case (15 minutes)
2. Political Party Functions, Purposes.ppt (20 minutes)
3. Guests-Naturalized Citizens (20 minutes)
4. Denver Post video (10 minutes)
5. React to BR. quest. on p. 156 [What do you think the requirements for becoming a citizen of the United States should be?] of TE; students will create 5 quests of their own, take the cit. test. )
6. Citizenship Test (20 minutes)
7. Basis for U.S. Citizenship.ppt,

Friday 4/6
1. Turn in Homework.
2. Reflection-discuss in pairs (groups of two). Should a person’s personal religious beliefs affect their political beliefs? Why or why not?
3. Chapter 8 and 9-Questions. What is not done is due next class (Monday/Tuesday)