Week 12, Syllabus

Mr. Ditzenberger, American Government
Time: 5 Periods, 3:30 hours
Unit 2, Civics
Week: 12 Dates: October 29-November 2
Objectives:
1. Students will analyze their personal political identity in terms of the left/right and authoritarian/libertarian axis.
2. Students will summarize and evaluate a current event relating to influencing the government.
3. Students will categorize the different interest groups and rank the ways in which they influence government.
4. Students will analyze the results of their survey.
5. Students will analyze the role of the media in the United States and learn the strengths and weaknesses of media sources.
6. Students will recite the general order in which the president of the U.S. is elected to office.
Materials: Textbook, http://ditzenberger.blogspot.com/index.html; textbook, lectures, game materials.
Monday
Discuss results of political surveys (individual results from last week). Work on Surveys.
Report on citizenship findings from passport countries.
Watch citizen videos from Denver Post.
Current Event-find an article relating to influencing politics-protest, vote, letter writing campaign, interest group, a lobbyist, etc. Due Wednesday.
Tuesday.
1. Opener: Plessy vs. Ferguson
2. Citizenship Test
3. Interest Groups
Wednesday
1. Opener: Should a person’s religious views influence their political views? Also, to what degree should Christians try to influence public policy?
2. Turn in homework-current event.
3. Analyze results of survey
4. Prepare for activity tomorrow. Bring in three articles, one from a local newspaper (Denver Post or Houston Chronicle, and a national paper (NYT, Wall Street Journal, USA today), do the same for Fox News and CNN, and the same for a magaizine, Time/Insight Magazine www.insightmag.com , Economist, or National Review. Analysis will be done in class.
5. Handout test review sheet.
Thursday
1. Analyze media sources.
Friday-
1. Discussion of election process (primary, general elections, local elections, referendum, etc.) and electoral college process.