GAME GUIDE FOR TEACHERS

Transcription

1 GAME GUIDE FOR TEACHERS Thank you for choosing to play Supreme Decision with your class! We re sure you and your students will have fun with this exciting classroom tool. We ve created this Game Guide to help you understand what Supreme Decision is all about and to help you guide your students as they play the game. Here are the questions this Game Guide will answer: What is Supreme Decision? What does Supreme Decision teach? Where will Supreme Decision fit into my civics curriculum? What do my students need to know before they play Supreme Decision? No surprises, please: What happens during Supreme Decision? What is the object of the game? How does scoring work? Help! Where are the answers? WHAT IS SUPREME DECISION? Supreme Decision is a game that combines animation and interactive activities to give students a peek into the inner workings of the Supreme Court. Students play a law clerk who must listen in on judges deliberations, understand each issue, and identify which side of the issue they agree with. WHAT DOES SUPREME DECISION TEACH? By playing Supreme Decision, students learn: What it s like to be in the courtroom with the Supreme Court during an oral argument How the Supreme Court justices analyze cases to make decisions That a right such as freedom of speech isn t as simple as it sounds, but involves many considerations That the same right can be interpreted in opposite ways by different people How judges consider precedent cases when making a decision That the Supreme Court s decisions appear in the form of a written opinion With regard to the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, students learn that: Students have the right to freedom of speech at school, but the right has limits Something needs to be speech before it is protected There are different kinds of speech (political and cultural), and not all kinds receive the same constitutional protection In schools, the need to educate may outweigh students right to freedom of speech Tinker v. Des Moines is an important case about students rights in school 1

2 WHERE WILL SUPREME DECISION FIT INTO MY CIVICS CURRICULUM? When you introduce the Bill of Rights o By playing Supreme Decision at this point, students gain an insight into the complexity of constitutional rights. As you proceed through the rest of the Bill of Rights and other important amendments, you will be in a better position to elicit deeper discussion of what those rights really mean. When you teach the judicial branch of government o Supreme Decision will give depth to your unit on the judicial branch by showing students how the Supreme Court actually works. Once students have this understanding, you will be able to help them better understand comparisons to other levels of the judicial branch such as the Court of Appeals and the trial courts. WHAT DO MY STUDENTS NEED TO KNOW BEFORE THEY PLAY SUPREME DECISION? Supreme Decision is designed so that students learn what they need to know about the Supreme Court and the First Amendment by playing the game. Even so, here is some information that will help students have context going into the game: Students should know what the Constitution and the First Amendment are. Students should know that the Supreme Court exists and that it is the highest court in the country. They should also know that people appeal cases to the Supreme Court when they think a lower court did not apply the law correctly. Finally, it would help students to know that each Justice hires several law clerks who research issues and help write opinions. NO SURPRISES, PLEASE: WHAT HAPPENS DURING SUPREME DECISION? First, students meet Justice Irene Waters, who welcomes students to the Supreme Court and invites them to work with her on the fictional case Brewer v. Hamilton Middle School. Next, students watch animated characters argue this case before a fictional Supreme Court. (The individual justices are fictional; the courtroom setup is not, except that clients do not stand with their lawyers during oral argument.) By watching the oral argument, students learn that Ben Brewer was suspended from his middle school for wearing a band t-shirt to school in violation of the school s no-band-t-shirt policy. Ben argues that the First Amendment right to freedom of speech gives him the right to wear his t-shirt to school, but the school argues that freedom of speech doesn t apply if the shirts are becoming disruptive by causing arguments between students. After the oral argument, students are told that the justices are deadlocked 4-4, and that Justice Waters will cast the deciding vote. Justice Waters instructs students to proceed through four separate rooms. In each room, students will listen to a pair of justices argue a specific point about the First Amendment right to freedom of speech as it applies to Ben s case. 2

3 After they listen, students must first identify which justice was arguing for the school and which was arguing for Ben. Then they will complete an activity to demonstrate that they understand the issue, decide which side of the issue they support, and decide whether that side of the issue helps Ben or the school. Here are the issues and activities in each room: Room 1: Is a band t-shirt speech or fashion? The activity presents students with a series of objects that they must identify as speech or fashion. (examples: ripped jeans, anti-war armband) Students play until they have answered five questions correctly. Room 2: Should cultural speech get as much protection as political speech? The activity presents students with a series of objects that they must identify as political speech or cultural speech. (examples: political campaign sign, sports trophy) Students play until they have answered five questions correctly. Room 3: Are limits on student speech good or bad for education? The activity presents students with a series of four images, each depicting a different level of freedom of speech that could be allowed at school. Students must place them along a continuum that spans from extremely limited speech to no limits on speech. Room 3: Does the Tinker case support Ben s side or the school s side? The activity presents students with one- or two-sentence excerpts from the Tinker case and asks students to identify whether each statement supports Ben s side or the school s side. Finally, students return to Justice Waters chambers, where the Justice sums up the student s performance and final game score. Justice Waters explains that she has written a court opinion based on the student s recommendations for each issue. Students majority opinions may be different, depending on the choices they made, because those choices will affect the reasoning behind the decision. At this point, students can either print the majority opinions or them to you as evidence that they played the game. WHAT IS THE OBJECT OF THE GAME? The object of the game is to gain a high point score based on getting the most possible correct answers. 3

4 HOW DOES SCORING WORK? Students gain points for correct answers and lose points for incorrect answers. In the first two rooms, incorrect answers are accompanied by an explanation of why the answer was wrong, so students have a chance to improve if they play the game again. In the second two rooms, students have opportunities to replay the activities until they get it right. At the beginning of the game, Justice Waters gives students a controller that tracks students points and decisions. The face of the controller appears on the right-hand side of the game on each screen. It keeps track of students total accumulated points, has a case meter that gauges whether students decisions are leaning toward Ben or the school, and keeps track of which justice the student agreed with in each room. ANSWER KEY FOR SELECTED ACTIVITIES: Rooms 1 and 2: If students choose a wrong answer here, the game immediately tells them why that answer is wrong. Each activity has a large number of items, so students keep playing until they have categorized five items correctly. Room 3: Below are the correct continuum configurations for each variation of the activity: 4

5 Room 4: Below is the summary of the Tinker case that students will see, followed by the correct answers for each statement from Tinker. Students who categorize the statements incorrectly will get a slightly different version of these statements. Summary: In 1965, 15-year-old Mary Beth Tinker and some other students planned to wear black armbands to school to protest the war in Vietnam. The schools principals heard about the students plan and told the students they could not wear the armbands. Some students wore the armbands anyway and five students were suspended. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decided that the school could not stop the students from wearing their arm bands, because of freedom of speech. Statements: Students and teachers have the First Amendment right to freedom of speech even when they are at school. BEN However, teachers and principals must be able to control some things student do so that learning is not disrupted. SCHOOL The First Amendment right to freedom of speech has limits in a school setting. SCHOOL Mary Beth Tinker s armband was not disruptive because there was no violence or interruption of classroom activities. BEN Just being afraid that something will be disruptive is not enough to take away the right to freedom of speech. After all, a disruption could happen any time one person says something that another person disagrees with. BEN But, if the school has good reason to think that the speech will cause disruption, it can stop the speech. SCHOOL 5