AIM: How important is the Vice-President to running the ...



The Vice-President

This lesson is envisioned as a two-day lesson or a one 90 minute block teaching session that include the HNN backgrounder, articles, political cartoons, and video. There is also an optional day three “debate session” to help student’s process and synthesize the material.

Common Core Standards Correlation:

Reading Standards for Literacy in History/Social Studies Grades 9 – 12: standards 1 – 4, and 6 – 9

Writing Standards for Literacy in History/Social Studies Grades 9 – 12: standards 1 - 9

Readings/Resources:

The HNN Backgrounder; Role and History of Vice Presidential Candidates (10 minutes) ; HNN Backgrounder on Vice-Presidents; How the Vice President Can Serve as the President's Most Unbiased Adviser, ;

Objectives:

Identify the tasks of the Vice President as understood in the Constitution

Explain the 12th amendment and why it was important to the political process

Discuss how different Presidents, in the 20th century, viewed their Vice President

Analyze how Walter Mondale changed the role of the Vice President in American politics

Evaluate the effectiveness of the vice presidents throughout the 20th century on the development of the country

Assess to what extent Walter Mondale changed the roll of the vice president in the executive branch

Evaluate the impact of our current vice president on policies and decision-making

Day One

I. Introduction/Bell Ringer:

A. Have students view video and then take notes on what the enumerated tasks of the Vice President.

Role and History of Vice Presidential Candidates (10 minutes)

B. Why did the founding fathers create the 12th Amendment and change the election of the Vice-President?

Read the brief article Top Ten Contested Elections: The Revolution of 1800

What was the crisis that surrounded the 1800 Presidential Election?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of electing the President and Vice-President together?

How does a joint election lead to the development of more a more entrenched two-party system?

Essential Question: How important is the Vice-President to running the government?

II. HNN Background: General Discussion

Have students identify the Vice President for each of the following Presidents, and explain how each president treated them and why:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Based on the political cartoon below, how might Ike feel about Nixon as Vice President while he campaigned during the mid-year elections?

[pic]

John F. Kennedy

4. Richard Nixon

5. Jimmy Carter

6. George Bush Jr.

What does the political cartoon below tell us about how Cheney viewed his role as vice president?

[pic]

Day Two

III. Group Work: Article Analysis

Students can actively read the article for homework, and then work in groups to cooperatively answer the questions

How the Vice President Can Serve as the President's Most Unbiased Adviser

By Joel K. Goldstein.

Group Work: have students answer the following questions and then share out their responses:

What role did Walter Mondale, Vice President to Jimmy Carter, propose for the office of the vice presidency?

How would the vice president help with presidential decision-making?

Why is debate important to decision-making, and how does the vice president help the debate on public policies?

Why must a vice president be a trustworthy advisor, versus a “pawn” to cater to partisan groups?

How does our current vice president help our president?

Summary of Essential Question: How important is the Vice-President to running the government?

Day Three (optional)

IV. Summary Debate: Is the vice president an asset or liability to the president of the United States?

Have students create a T-Chart that lists the assets and liabilities of a vice president’s actions on the president’s position

Have students research the role of our current vice president on national politics. Each student should bring in three policies or developments the current vice-president worked on, and explain how it impacts the president’s policy positions

Students should evaluate the importance of the vice president’s actions and how they relate to helping or hindering the president’s position with the American people.

Enrichment:

Have students create a political cartoon that illustrates their assessment of the current vice president’s impact on the president’s policies

Have students construct their own video interpretation of the role of the vice president throughout history

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download