<aside> ⌛ Estimated student time on platform: 70 minutes (+ blending)

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<aside> 🗣 Lesson host: Sam Chaltain, First Amendment and civics scholar

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<aside> 3️⃣ Difficulty level: 2 (for middle school, high school and higher education) This lesson is reading-intensive.

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<aside> ✔️ Assessments: 22 total ****(8 auto-graded and 14 teacher evaluable)

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<aside> 🗒️ Standards: This lesson has Common Core, ISTE, C3 and state-specific alignments. Find your standards in the Checkology alignments dropdown menu to learn more.

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Learning objectives:

• I can name the five freedoms protected by the First Amendment.
• I can explore and analyze six landmark First Amendment cases, judge them myself, and defend or criticize the Supreme Court’s decision in each.

Essential questions:

• What five freedoms are protected by the First Amendment?
• How do the five freedoms work together to strengthen American democracy?
• In what ways are the freedoms dependent on one another? How do they support, protect and enhance each other?
• What court cases have been most influential in shaping press protections and individuals’ rights to free expression under the First Amendment?

Background:

Not only does a free press play a vital role in a robust democracy, it also emphasizes the power and importance of information — and that, in turn, affirms the civic and personal value of being news-literate. By focusing on First Amendment protections in action, this lesson gives students a deeper, more personal understanding of the First Amendment’s value to citizens, of the ways its protections have changed and evolved over time, and of their own First Amendment rights.

The lesson features six key First Amendment Supreme Court cases on such issues as student speech in school, defamation and libel, flag-burning, and regulation of the internet. As students grapple with these six precedents, they are guided to a deeper understanding of how the law was interpreted to apply to these issues. In addition, it prompts them to think carefully about the larger civic significance of each ruling and, by extension, of the First Amendment itself.

This lesson includes a series of independent learning resources (one for each case) that are designed to help students explore the cases in depth. We recommend that you advise students how much time to spend exploring these case studies and that you provide them with guidance and strategies to work through the text.

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Full lesson guide: The First Amendment

From the field: The First Amendment