Legislative Branch, Day 3 - Class Recap

The office of Speaker of the House, which is currently controlled by Republicans, and John Boehner, but will likely go to Representative Paul Ryan soon. Photo taken in 2010.

Hi everyone,

It was a sort of sleepy day in class today, as many students were tired from the very early morning pep rally here at Westview, or just that it was the end of a long week. In any case, it was basically another work/prep day for our legislative branch unit. Here's the recap for today:

Learning Targets Addressed:
Knowledge LT 2: I can demonstrate an understanding of the role of governments in current issues.
Knowledge LT 5: I can demonstrate an understanding of the principles, structures, and functions of different levels of U.S. government.

Soundtrack: "Represent" by Weezer. Selected for today because we were continuing to look at Oregon's Representatives in Congress. Get it? Lyrics here.

AGENDA 10/23/15:
News Brief – David
Create Bills
114th Congress
Computer Lab N210

Homework: Read the blog. Create a bill if you did not in class. Finish the Oregon representatives handout and the 114th Congress profile. Next news brief: Dru.

News Brief: David had the news brief today and selected this article to talk about: CNN.com - 1 dead in shooting at Tennessee State University in Nashville. This was a breaking news story as of last night, so we tried to determine what happened. I asked the class about what implications this might have in regard to gun control and the Second Amendment. There were some good perspectives here. Thanks, David!

Dru was randomly selected for the next news brief.

Here's Wildcat News for the day:

Create a Bill: This was in preparation for next class, when we will be doing a simulation of Congress. Here were the questions I wanted you to answer in your bill proposals:

1. What are you proposing?
2. Who will it impact?
3. When will it begin or end?
4. Where (which states) will be impacted?
5. Why should this bill pass?
6. How much will it cost?

Bring these in next class, please!

114th Congress: The last new piece from today was this handout, looking at the demographics of the current representatives in congress:

Google Drive - 114th Congress Profile Assignment

Here is a link to the website/pdf document that has the answers:

FAS.org - Membership of the 114th Congress: A Profile

I hope this helps!

Computer Lab N210: For the rest of the class, we were in the computer lab, working on the Oregon representatives handout, as well as the 114th Congress paper and creating bills. Here is the handout that I passed out last class:

Google Drive - Oregon Representatives in Congress Handout

The main point here is to know who our representatives are and what they believe. It is important that we know who represents us in Congress, and what their ideas are!

Thanks for your work on this! See you next class, when we will be creating legislation of our own!