Grades 9-12
The U.S. Constitution: the full text
Social studies & civics
The complete text of the United States Constitution, with an original reading guide for working through each article.
The lesson plan
Learning objectives
- Students will identify the structure of the Constitution: the preamble and the articles that follow it.
- Students will explain, in their own words, what one article establishes.
- Students will use the reading guide to work through the text article by article rather than all at once.
Suggested sequence
- Orient: Read the preamble together and discuss what it says the document is for.
- Article-by-article reading: Assign one article per session, working through it with the reading guide.
- Small-group discussion: After each article, have small groups summarize it in a sentence or two.
- Synthesis: After the articles assigned, have students explain how the branches they read about check one another.
Discussion prompts
- Why might the framers have split power across separate articles instead of writing one long list of rules?
- What question would you ask the framers about the article you just read?
Checking for understanding
Use each session’s small-group summary as a formative check: a group that can state what its assigned article establishes, in its own words, has met the lesson’s objective for that session.