Unit Two Lesson Plans

Lesson 1: Name Your Representatives

• Explain to students how the state is divided into forty House Districts and twenty Senate Districts using an election district map. Discuss why there are more representatives in rail belt areas compared with northern or southeastern sections of the state.
• Have students identify their senator. What committees are they assigned? What issues are pertinent to those committees? How important is it to be chair of a committee? Are they a member of the majority or the minority? What is their party affiliation? How long have they been a senator?
• Post addresses, telephone, E-mail and fax numbers for your senator in your classroom. Students can be assigned responsibilities for interviewing the senator to develop a viewpoint on student generated issues. Presentations can be made to the class.
• Investigate: Are there future dates when your senator can be invited to meet with your students? When does your senator schedule constituent teleconferences?
• Repeat the activities in # 1 -4 as a means to introduce your representative to students.
• Remind students that: Legislators want you to know them. This is because they are political people, but it’s also because it’s part of doing their job well. They can’t know how you feel if they don’t know who you are.
• To find out how your legislator thinks on a given issue, students could use personal interviews, letters, and attend the meetings held in most districts when the legislator is home. Some legislators are making use of the state teleconference system to hold weekly constituent meetings when they are in Juneau. Your LIO can provided you with meeting schedules.
• Have students check out the State of Alaska web page, there is a legislative directory for both the House and the Senate listing profile information.

Lesson 2:  Teamwork

• Yardstick
• A deck of playing cards or index for each group
• A bag of identical "building supplies" for each group (These may include: index cards, rubber bands, small pieces of masking tape, paper clips, toilet paper rolls, paper cups, etc.)

1. Divide the class into groups of 4 - 6 students. Distribute a deck of cards to each group. Tell students they will have 5 minutes to build a structure that has at least 4 stories. They may only use the cards.
2. During the building session, circulate to observe and answer questions, but do not provide any assistance in the building of the structures. Call time at exactly 5 minutes. (Anticipate that most groups will be unable to solve the problem.)
3. Ask if any groups successfully solved the problem or were close to solving the problem. Then write the word teamwork on the board. Ask the students what attitudes and behaviors were helpful in their attempts to solve the problem. List key words, phrases and ideas under team work.
4. Write the words ‘NOT Teamwork!’ on the board. Ask students to list some of the attitudes and behaviors they encountered hat made their group less successful in working together.
5. From these two lists and their own experiences, ask each group to create 5 guideline for successful teamwork in a cooperative setting. Share lists with the class.
6. Tell students they will have one more opportunity to work together. Distribute bags of building supplies. Tell students they will have 10 minutes to build a structure that is at least 3 feet high, using only the materials at hand. Once again, circulate during the building, but do not interfere with the process. Call time at the end of 10 minutes. (Most groups should have completed the task successfully.) Use the yardstick to measure each structure.
7. Ask groups to share their structures and to comment on the cooperative problem-solving process they used. Ask each group to comment specifically on which guidelines helped their teamwork the most.

• Have students write a class definition for teamwork to post on a wall.
• Students may list specific situations in their lives where teamwork is helpful.
• Have students observe situations in their school where teamwork is important and report about them to the class.
• Have students view segments of Gavel to Gavel Alaska to observe situations in legislature where teamwork is being used to conduct business in a timely manner.
• Students may observe settings in the legislature where teamwork is important. They may choose one setting and report about it to the class.
• Students may create and share a 5 - 10 minute "problem" for the class to work on.

Lesson 3:  They Met the Challenge

• Index cards
• Pens, pencils, and/or felt-tip pens
• Reference materials, such as biographies and encyclopedias

1. Explain to students that they will be creating a card game based on legislators who have met the challenge." Have students discuss their nominees for the game and their reasons for considering them.
2. Give students the following guidelines for creating a deck of cards: Create an Identity Card. On this card, draw a picture of your subject, print his or her name, and give his or her dates, and a brief identification. For example: Make four Fact Cards. Each contains a statement describing a significant event, leadership role or accomplishment in the subject’s legislative tenure but otherwise not identifying him or her.
3. Each student should create at least one set of cards that include one Identity Card and four Fact Cards.
4. Explain the rules of the game, as follows: Players draw (or are dealt) three cards each from the Identity Card deck and lay them out vertically on the playing surface.

They then draw (or are dealt) five cards each from the Fact deck. The purpose of the game is to match the Fact Cards to their Identity Card. So if players have any of the Fact Cards that belong with their Identity Cards, they lay them on the table beside the appropriate Identity Card. When players have all five cards from any set, they can remove the set and get 50 points for it.

If players draw Fact Cards that do not go with any of their Identity Cards, they keep these private. They have two options:

Put these cards back in the correct deck and draw an equal number of cards to try again. Or retain some of the cards because they match their opponent’s Identity Cards. These are Wild Cards. Note that you are allowed to keep only two wild cards at a time. Or Players can use their Wild Cards to "capture" their opponent’s sets. For example, player A sees that player B has three Fact Cards to go with his Identity Card for Governor Egan. Player A, however, is holding the fourth Fact Card. She can reach over and capture the set, winning the 50 points for herself. The winner is the player with the most points when the Fact Card deck is used up.

Suggest that students study the complete sets of cards before playing the game. Have students create additional sets and decks of cards after they feel they know all the facts about the set they have been using. Encourage students to think of other games for which they can use the decks.

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