Rights of the Accused and Rest of the Bill of Rights - Class Recap

Rays of the sun streaming through the flag of the United States, over the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Picture taken in 2011.

Hi everyone,

Welcome back from your weekend! Lots of grading and work for me to do, but I am still looking forward to it, of course. Here's the recap for the day:

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 branches of U.S. government.

Soundtrack: “99 Problems (Clean)" by Jay Z. Selected for today because it discusses the various protections that the Bill of Rights offers. Lyrics (which are decidedly NOT clean, but Rap Genius does offer some interesting interpretations of what they mean) here.

AGENDA 10/10/16:
Wildcat News Brief - Liam
Fourth Amendment
Pleading the Fifth
Bill of Rights Review

Homework: Read the blog! Keep reviewing the Bill of Rights for upcoming quiz (next week). Take the Political Spectrum test if you want. Next news brief: Keane.

Wildcat News Brief: Liam had the news brief today and selected this story to talk about: OregonLive.com - Possible PERS fix: Borrowing money. This is a really interesting story (as evidenced by the 800+ comments on the article online) about what Oregon should do in regards to the Public Employees Retirement System. PERS is a system that many people who work for the government (including public school teachers) get to use to help save for retirement, so this is an especially interesting story for us. Thanks, Liam!

Keane volunteered to do the next news brief.

We also talked about the weekend, including what happened with the second presidential debate last night. Wow, was there a lot to try and go over with this weekend. I showed this debate recap in class:

CNN.com - The scorched-earth debate in two minutes

What a time to teach and learn about government! :-)

Here's Wildcat News today as shown in class, if you missed class or wanted to see it again:

Fourth Amendment: Because I want to get done with the Bill of Rights, today we looked through the details of the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendments. We continued going through a packet of individual U.S. Supreme Court cases that helped set the scope of the Fourth Amendment. That packet is here:

Google Drive - Fourth Amendment Protections Handout

We finished the case on the last page today, which basically said that police can have time to get a search warrant while a suspect is waiting.

Pleading The Fifth: I showed this clip to introduce the Fifth Amendment:

This led to another handout, going through the rights of the accused in the United States. I know it was a heavy day of handouts and readings, so I appreciate your focus and effort in looking at these together!

Google Drive - Rights of the Accused Handout

We went over the case studies and had some more good discussion about various student questions.

Bill of Rights Review: At the end of class, I gave some time for students to review the Bill of Rights and put them in their own words on the Understanding the Constitution worksheet in Google Classroom. See you next class! We will have some fun with Jeopardy!