Essential Questions

Essential Questions introduce new concepts, topics, and ideas, and challenge students to gain a greater understanding of how enduring American government issues are relevant and still affect them today. Found at the beginning of each chapter, Essential Questions continuously reinforces the content while connecting what students are learning to their lives and the larger world around them.

Understanding by Design®

Academic research, in particular the Understanding by Design research of author Grant Wiggins, has informed the Magruder’s instructional design and pedagogy. Understanding by Design® is a groundbreaking but commonsense approach to building curriculum, instruction, and assessment centered around Essential Questions and “big ideas.”

Pearson is committed to this approach and has entered into an exclusive partnership with Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, coauthors of Understanding by Design.

• •Visit the Pearson UBD Website
• •Download UbD Research Support
• •Download ASCD Article about Wiggins and UbD
• •Download Professional Development article on UbD
• •Listen to the Grant Wiggins Podcast on UbD

American Government Essential Question Video

Students gain an understanding of the Essential Questions for American Government through relevant videos.

American Government Video

Student Edition

The core components – Student Edition, the Essential Questions Journal, hands-on activities, and the digital course – are tied together through Understanding by Design® based Essential Questions so that they can be used in any combination depending on teacher preference.

Government on the Go

Students experience Magruder’s American Government content in a personalized way with Government on the Go. Government on the Go allows students to gain a deeper understanding of content with downloadable audio and video files that include:

• Political Dictionary Audio in English and Spanish
• Audio Review in English and Spanish
• Audio Tour Animations

Experience It! Activity Pack

With Magruder’s American Government, the opportunities to actively learn and collaborate with classmates are endless. Active learning inspires students to obtain an enduring understanding of the content they're studying. The American Government: Experience It! Activity Pack contains a wide range of documents, maps, role cards, and data to be used in the classroom for simulations.

Essential Questions Journal

In the Essential Questions Journal, students explore the big ideas and develop their understanding through activities at the unit, chapter, and section level.

• •Unit Warm Up introduces students to the unit Essential Questions, asking them to brainstorm and access prior knowledge.
• •Chapter Exploration and the Essential Question Activity pages guide students throughout the chapter to explore the Essential Question, challenging them to think creatively.
• •Unit Essays at the end of every unit ask students to demonstrate their understanding of the Essential Question in a thoughtful and well-written essay.

Teacher Resources

Teacher resources can be found online, on disc, an in print with the All-in-One Teacher Resources. These time-saving resources found online, in print, and on DVD allow for built-in differentiation and include:

• • Prereading and Vocabulary Worksheets
• • Bellringer Worksheets
• • Student Rubrics
• • On-level and Foundations Lesson Plans
• • On-Level and Foundations Reading Comprehension Worksheets
• • On-level and Foundations Core Worksheets
• • On-level and Foundations Extend Worksheets
• • On-level and Foundations Skills Worksheets
• • On-level and Foundations Landmark Cases of the Supreme Court
• • On-level and Foundations Section Quiz
• • Chapter Outline
• • On-level Chapter Tests A
• • Foundations Chapter Tests B
• • AYP Monitoring Assessments
• • Color Transparences
• • Essential Questions Journal
• • Essential Questions Journal Answer Key
• • Teacher to Teacher Lesson Plan

Success Tracker™

Success Tracker is an online, formative assessment and remediation management system correlated to the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards. It helps teachers provide personalized remediation for each student and provides you with powerful, disaggregated data analysis of student performance.

Students will take online assessments and be provided instant remediation on areas of weakness. Teachers will instantly receive feedback on test results, and get the reporting they need to evaluate students and classes on state standard performance.