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• Choosing to Make a Nation
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Constitutional Theme Guides

Constitutional Theme guides are tools for educators and members of the general public interested in exploring the history of the Constitution or particular Constitutional sections, themes and topics through primary source documents.

Choosing to Make a Nation: Interactive Lessons on the Revolution, Constitution, and Bill of Rights

The Choosing to Make a Nation Curriculum Project developed by award-winning author Ray Raphael is a student-centered, primary source-rich approach to teaching about American history and our nation‘s founding documents. The lesson plans in this curriculum are premised on the idea that history is the chronicle of choices made by actors/agents/protagonists in specific contexts. Students understand choices – they make them all the time. These lessons involve students by placing them in the shoes of historical people and asking: “What might you do in such instances?”

For these exercises to be historical (more than affirmations of individual whims), we needed to provide context: what was the issue, the problem to be solved? What were the existing realities/constraints that limited possibilities? With those in mind, what were the available options? For each option, how did people view the possibilities for a desired outcome? What were the potential dangers? When studying battles, we see how generals evaluate troop strengths, positioning, logistics, morale, and so on. In fact, all historical actors do this—not just leading political figures, but ordinary people and collective bodies. In Revolutionary times, people often made decisions in groups, both indoors (town meetings, caucuses, conventions, congresses) and “out-of-doors,” as they said at the times, informal gatherings that protested authority or enforced popular will. Individuals, forced to navigate the troubled waters of those days, also faced momentous decisions.

Our task is to introduce students to historical protagonists who confronted such choices. Points of decision create teachable moments. We help students imagine, from a distant time, the hopes of these people, but also their constraints. With these protagonists, students explore the available options. Having skin in the game, they will better understand why people acted as they did. They will think more deeply about the paths actually taken — how events ensued, the consequences of decisions, and the subsequent issues these created. By exercising individual and group decision-making skills within political contexts, they prepare for civic life.

The Revolutionary War

The Declaration of Independence Unit

The Articles of Confederation Unit

The Constitutional Convention Unit

The Constitution in Action: The Early Republic Unit

Lesson Plans by Grade

These lesson plans have been developed by ConSource staff members and/or teacher content partners.