We the People...

The United States

Constitution & Government

This is a picture of the American flag.

By: Kelly Hurley


Table of Contents

Overview...............................page 3

How to Use This Book.................page 4

Title Page..............................page 5

The U.S. Constitution..................page 6

Preamble................................page 7

The Bill of Rights......................page 8

Legislative Branch......................page 9

Executive Branch.....................page 10

Judicial Branch.......................page 11

Working Together....................page 12

Constitution Day......................page 13

Works Cited..........................page 14


Overview Page

Social Studies, Grade 5

Unit: Government

New York State Learning Standard:

Standard SS5: Civics, Citizenship, and Government

Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the necessity for establishing governments; the governmental system of the United States and other nations; the United States Constitution; the basic civic values of American constitutional democracy; and the roles, rights, and responsibilities of citizenship, including avenues of participation.

 Key Idea SS5.3: 

Central to civics and citizenship is an understanding of the roles of the citizen within American constitutional democracy and the scope of a citizen’s rights and responsibilities

 

 Standards Benchmarks:

SS5.6c.1 Knows ways in which authority is used and ways in which power can be used without authority and how it limits the power of people in government

-governors of states have the authority to carry out and enforce laws

 -systems of checks and balances

 -power of government is limited by the constitution

 -protect personal, political and economic rights

SS5.6c.2 Knows the basic purposes of government in the United States

 -to protect the rights of individuals

 -to promote the common good

 -branches and responsibilities

SS5.6c.3 Knows some basic uses of constitutions or other legal, political and historic documents (e.g., to set forth the purposes of government, to describe the way a government is organized and how power is allocated, to define the relationship between a people and their government)

SS5.6c.5  Citizenship in the United States, Canada and nations of Latin America includes an awareness of the patriotic celebrations of those nations.

 -Holidays that honor significant people and events

 Outline

1.   The United States Constitution

2.   Democracy

3.   The Legislative Branch

4.   The Executive Branch

5.   The Judicial Branch

6.   Checks and Balances

7.   Constitution Day

 

 


How to Use This Book

Welcome!  This book was created to help you review 5th grade social studies material related to the United States Constitution and its connection to the United States government. 

At the bottom of each page, you will see coaches.  While some pages might only have one coach, other pages might have three coaches.  Katie, Bill and Monty were created to help you hear the book aloud and think about what you are reading.

You will see Katie at the bottom of every page.  To hear the page read aloud, you can click on her.  Be patient!  Sometimes it takes her a second to get started. After you have listened to Katie read, you can click on Bill.  Bill will prompt you with a question to get you thinking about what you read and what you might already know.  He will also give you a hint.  Clicking on Monty will provide you with a model answer to Bill’s prompt.

At different points throughout the book, you will see underlined words.  These are vocabulary words that you might already know.  If you do not know what the word means, you can click on it.  This will bring you to a glossary where you will see the definition. 

Go ahead, get started.  Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 


We the People...

The United States

Constitution & Government

 

By: Kelly Hurley

This is the Statue of Liberty.

The signing of the United States Constitution.

The United States Constitution

The United States Constitution  is a document that describes the rights people in America have.  It is the world's oldest plan of written government.  The Constitution is the "Supreme Law of the Land," meaning that it must be obeyed by everyone.  This document also explains how our government works and describes the three main branches of government: the legislative branch, the executive branch, and the judicial branch. 

 

 

 


The United States Constitution.

The constitution begins with "We the people of the United States."  This is called the preamble .  The authors wrote the preamble in this way to show that the people had the power in this country.  When the people have the power, it is called a democracy .  The United States is also called a democratic republic because the people choose representatives to make the laws and run the government.



The Bill of Rights

A Bill of Rights is a document that describes the basic rights of the people. Almost every state constitution included a Bill of Rights at this time; however, the national Constitution did not. The Bill of Rights was added to the United States Constitution as the first ten amendments  in 1791.


The Legislative Branch

 

The first branch of government is the legislative branch.  The main job of this part of government is to make laws.  In the federal government this branch is called Congress.  Congress meets in the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., where the laws are made.

This is a picture of the United States Capitol.

This is a picture of President Barack Obama.

The Executive Branch

The second branch is the executive branch .  The main job of this branch of government is to see that the laws passed by congress  are carried out.  The executive branch usually suggests laws to congress.  The President, who is the head of the executive branch, looks over the federal government and its workers.


This is a representing the nine members of the Supreme Court.

The Judicial Branch

The third branch is the judicial branch .  The main job of this branch is to make sure that laws are carried out fairly.  This includes the most important court in the country, which is the Supreme Court .  The Supreme Court is made up of nine judges and decides cases about the rights and freedoms of all citizens.

 


The Branches Working Together

All three branches of the federal government work together.  As part of this, each branch makes sure that the other branches are doing what they are supposed to do.  This is a system that we call checks and balances .  Each branch can check, or stop, another branch.  This is very important because it helps keep any one branch from becoming too powerful.      

The Scales of Justice representing the system of Checks and Balances.

This is a picture of the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

Constitution Day

Each year, we celebrate Constitution Day.  This holiday is an American federal holiday that recognizes the day the United States Constitution was signed by the Founding Fathers.  This holiday is observed on September 17th.  This law was written by Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia and was approved by Congress in 2004.

 

 


Works Cited

Baldwinsville central school district's curriculum page. (n.d.). Retrieved April 10, 2010, from http://www.bville.org/district/curriculum/curriculum.cfm

Banks, J. A., Boehm, R. G., Colleary, K. P., Contreras, G., Goodwin, L., McFarland, M. A., & Parker, W. C. (2003). Our Nation (pp. 324-331). New York: Macmillan/McGraw-Hill.

Discovery Education. 2009. Discovery Education. 11 April 2009 http://www.discoveryeducation.com.

Flickr from Yahoo.. (n.d.). Retrieved April 10, 2010, from http://www.flickr.com/groups/creative_commons-_free_pictures.

University at Buffalo. (n.d.). Resources for teaching and learning. Retrieved April 10, 2010, from http://nylearns.org/

Webb, A. (2005, June 24). Celebrate constitution day on September 17.. Retrieved April 10, 2010, from http://www.teacher.scholastic.com.