A.

Philosopher Presentations
The goal of this lesson, as I said above, was to familiarize the students with some major
lines of governmental philosophy. The state of Michigan requires for high school
students to be able to explain the historical and philosophical origins of American
constitutional government. I chose to assist the students in doing so through this lesson.
First, I put the students into groups of 2 or 3 and assigned them one of the seven
mainstream philosophers from history. There were some multiple groups researching the
same Philosopher, but I allowed this for purposes of classroom management. I found
that, in this class, larger groups invited some students to slack or not work at all. Next, I
required the group to closely and critically read an excerpt of information about their
philosopher. A copy of this text with how I instructed them to annotate it is attached
below.

My hope here, by instructing them to use the circled G and H, was to help students annotate
and be able to understand the text easier by first recognizing which parts talked about human
nature and which ones pertained more to government.
Also, the class had previously been taught about certain ideas pertaining to government including
concepts such as, state of nature/human nature verses authority and sovereignty of Kings.
Notions about civil society, power, legitimacy, equality, absolute freedom, natural rights, and the
social contract had also been discussed. It had all been covered in the lesson prior. Here is an
example of student notes pertaining to this teaching. This is my copy. Students had a blank
graphic organizer just like this and were to fill it out during my lecture. The point here is that
they did have information that they should be somewhat familiar with from the prior lesson in
order to help them achieve todays goal of summarizing the text and looking for governmental
concepts woven into the U.S. Constitution and talked about by these philosophers of old.
Today students were expected to infer from their reading what their assigned philosopher
believed about government, human nature, and any of the ideas mentioned above. First, they
were to use their notes about these concepts, along with their informational handout about their
philosopher to see if these ideas were ones that were accepted, unaccepted or not mentioned by
the philosopher they were studying. Next, they were given a large piece of paper to write their
findings on. Afterward, they were to present it to the class. While each group presented, the rest
of the class took notes. Here is a copy of the Philosopher Graphic Organizer they needed to fill
in, while listening to their peers and myself.
I wanted them to teach us what they knew in order to help them, even further, learn about their
philosopher. During each of their presentations I took it upon myself to add to their teachings
where I saw fit. I filled in information the students may have missed and corrected any facts
they misrepresented. I felt that this way of lecturing the students helped them to be much more
a part of their personal learning experience.