Assign this text to deeply engage your students!

Actively Learn provides free ELA, science, and social studies digital content—short stories, primary sources, textbook sections, science articles, novels, videos, and more—and embeds them with assignments aligned to standards for all 50 states that you can assign immediately or customize for your students.

Whether you’re looking for “The Tell-Tale Heart,” The Hate U Give, “The Gettysburg Address,” or current science articles and simulations, Actively Learn is the free go-to source to help you guide your students' growth in critical thinking all year.

Teaching Separation of powers & the government shutdown

Separation of powers & the government shutdown

By Bruce Peabody, Professor of American Politics, Fairleigh Dickinson University\nAdapted with permission by Actively Learn staff\n\nThe founders built a system of government with three separate branches: the executive (the president), the legislative (Congress), and the judicial (the court system). We call this the “separation of powers.” The branches are each supposed to check the actions of the others in order to prevent abuses of power. We call this a system of “checks and balances” because the branches should share power and make sure that the other branches do not get too powerful.\nBut we are currently seeing that all three branches of government are breaking down. This makes it

Bruce Peabody, Professor of American Politics, Fairleigh Dickinson University
The Conversation

ESSENTIAL QUESTION:

Is the recent government shutdown evidence that the system of checks and balances is broken?
STANDARDS:
RH.3 - Historical Process, RH.7 - Visual Information, RI.2 - Main Ideas, RI.6 - Author's Purpose

DEPTH OF KNOWLEDGE (DOK) LEVELS:

2,3
Assign this text to your students for free!