Tag Archives: constitution

Constitution USA in PBS LearningMedia

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This spring, PBS LearningMedia spotlights the U.S. Constitution!

Enhance your next lesson with PBS LearningMedia’s brand new collection of FREE, curriculum-targeted resources from the series, Constitution USA (Grades 9-12). Use these resources to instigate classroom discussion around key concepts like Federalism, equality, and separation of powers – and to help your students to better-understand the impact of the Constitution in their own lives. Click here to access to the new collection.

The framers of the Constitution were cautious about centralizing power and, as a result, adopted the philosophy of ‘divide and conquer’. At the national level, they created three different branches of government to administer three different types of power: The legislative branch made the laws through a Congress of two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The executive branch enforced the laws through a president, vice president, and numerous executive departments such as Treasury and State. And the judicial branch interpreted the laws through a Supreme Court and other lower courts. Use this special collection from PBS LearningMedia to expand on these concepts with your high school students and to reinforce key concepts in your next history, government, or social studies class. Featured resources include:

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In the Gallery with Sandow Birk

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"American Qur'an - Sura 25" (detail) by Sandow Birk

Sandow Birk was featured on KQED's Spark when he was making paintings about an imagined war between Northern and Southern California. He was also making a film based on Dante's Inferno that starred handmade puppets. Since making the movie, Birk has been busy in his studio, working with different mediums and themes to create his highly-charged works, which sometimes comment on politicized events we hear about in the news such as the war in Iraq.

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