Early America: The Creation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights

The American Revolution has recently ended and the newly found United States of America is running under the Articles of Confederation. While the states are joined together in unity, the Articles turn out to have a weak central government, and the states realize that something needs to change. And so begins the creation of the Constitution of the United States of America.

In this class, students will learn about the creation of the Constitution, from the events leading up to the US needing a change in a governing document, to the Constitutional Convention, to the six basic principles of the Constitution, to the Bill of Rights. Students will be provided with detailed descriptions, illustrations and various charts to understand key facts and ideas regarding the creation of the United States Constitution. Furthermore, students will be posed with various guided discussion questions, as well as encouraged to analyze how the Constitution and the Bill of Rights affect American citizens today.

The goal of this course is to provide students with background information to 1. give insight into how the United States government that we know today has been shaped, and 2. inspire students to appreciate the past as well as the present.

All in all, this class will be highly interactive, with the majority of the work happening in the here-and-now of the class session. By the time this class is over, students will not only have a deeper understanding of the creation of the US Constitution, but will also have a renewed appreciation of the rights that Americans are afforded.