Units
Current Events
- >> SCOTUS Blog - A blog following the Supreme Court's cases and decisions. It also has a plain English section for non-lawyers.
Review Materials
- >> Annotated US Constitution (Congress.gov) or Annotated US Constitution (Cornell.edu) - this is an excellent resource to help you understand each of the sections of the Constitution. There are a number of explanatory essays and precedents contained here. Please go here for clarification!
- >> The Constitution Center: Interactive Constitution - This is similar, and has everything you need to understand the Constitution. You may find it a bit easier to navigate. This is specifically cited by the CED as a good tool to use to learn the concepts.
- Supreme Court Cases - A Study Guide
- This Youtube channel essentially covers everything you need to know: Carey LaManna
- See the video playlists below - they have everything you need from a few different sources in a handful of very large playlists. Not busy? Maybe even a little busy? Put one on and listen.
- Albert.io has a number of small practice quizzes you can take to brush up.
- Vocab Review - Quizlet 1 and Quizlet 2 (organized by book chapters)
- Other Confusing things...
The Exam
Types of Free Response Questions
Here is a presentation with examples and rubrics for each of the essay types.
College Board Exam Tips has not only a listing of good general advice for preparing, but also a list of task verbs that you'll need to be familiar with to respond to the FRQs.
From the Course and Exam Description:
- Concept Application: Respond to a political scenario, explaining how it relates to a political principle, institution, process, policy, or behavior
- Quantitative Analysis: Analyze quantitative data, identify a trend or pattern, draw a conclusion from the visual representation, and explain how the data relates to a political principle, institution, process, policy, or behavior
- SCOTUS Comparison: Compare a nonrequired Supreme Court case with a required Supreme Court case, explaining how information from the required case is relevant to that in the nonrequired one.
- Argument Essay: Develop an argument in the form of an essay, using evidence from one or more required foundational documents
Read Released FRQ Questions and Scoring Notes >>
Further FRQ details from the CED:
All five big ideas as well as the required content presented in all five units of instruction are subject to being assessed in Section II as a whole. At least one free-response question will assess one or more learning objectives that pertain to public policy. All four free-response questions are weighted equally; however it is recommended that students spend 20 minutes of exam time on each of the first three questions, and 40 minutes on the argumentative essay.
In the argumentative essay question, students are given a prompt that can have more than one possible response. They will be asked to write a defensible claim or thesis that responds to the question and establishes a line of reasoning (the response cannot earn a point for simply restating the prompt).
They must then cite and describe one piece of evidence from a list of foundational documents. To earn additional points students must identify a second piece of specific and relevant evidence, making sure they explain how or why both pieces support the claim or thesis. To complete their essay students must identify an opposing or alternative perspective, demonstrate a correct understanding of it, and refute, concede, or rebut that perspective
Scoring FRQs/Argumentative Essay
This is, of course, also from the CED. You should really download it and read it.
The image in the background of the Unit 4 tile is a photograph of this article on Pew Research.
The photograph in the background of the Unit 5 tile is this image courtesy of Lars Plougmann from London, United Kingdom.
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