HUDSON, N.H. – Alvirne High School Social Studies teacher Donna Morin was chosen as one of three educators nationally to create a lesson plan for Annenberg Classroom’s award-winning Constitution Project documentary series, as announced in February.
Annenberg Classroom, which is a program of the Leonore Annenberg Institute for Civics at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, selected Morin’s lesson plan to accompany their short historical documentary, “The Eighth Amendment: Cruel and Unusual Punishment.” Morin, who is in her 16th year as an educator, said she has always loved social sciences and heard of this opportunity this past fall.
“I attended the National Council for Social Studies Annual Conference and discovered that they were showcasing a new film about the 8th amendment and how it's been adapted for juvenile justice,” said Morin. “This is a topic that I'm interested in and is included in my Law and Order and American Government curriculum. I then discovered that they were looking for teachers to submit lesson plan proposals, and the top 3 would earn a $1500 stipend. I developed a lesson plan that features their video and incorporated the main themes of how the evolving standards of decency have been applied to juvenile justice.”
Morin, who teaches college prep and Advanced Placement levels of psychology and U.S. government, wanted students to expand from the video’s themes and examine if the Supreme Court should apply similar standards to adult criminal justice and capital punishment. The creation of her lesson plan strove to be consumable for all levels as a great resource on the topic.
“I used the themes of the video to develop the lesson plan, careful to scaffold learning for various types of learners,” said Morin. “I wanted the lesson to include primary source evaluations as well as extension activities so that students would utilize various depths of knowledge throughout the lesson.”
Annenberg Classroom, which has free resources including over 65 videos on constitutional concepts and Supreme Court cases, as well as other materials, will publish the lesson plan in March on their website.
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