The Great Debates – Unit Set

Product Description

The Great Debates puts students in the stakeholder role of media consultants for Richard Nixon in his 1960 election bid for president. John F. Kennedy has surged in the polls after his success in the first-ever televised presidential debates. The students are tasked with learning about both candidates’ campaign messaging strategies, conducting research on messaging, and presenting media messaging techniques to Nixon to help him win the presidency.

Problem-Based Learning (PBL) units immerse children in real-world, complex situations. While searching for a solution to the problem, students simultaneously develop a deep understanding of a variety of subjects and improve their skills in research, higher-order thinking, decision making, and more.

Each unit consists of a Teacher Manual of detailed instructions on how to implement the unit and a student Problem Log, in which the students find necessary materials for the unit and also where they record their work. In addition, many of the units have a Resource Book that contains primary resources and supplemental materials (such as photographs) that are also available online so that instructors can download them, print them out, and, if necessary, make copies of them to distribute to the students. The units that do not have Resource Books tend to deal with current issues and offer suggestions for websites where both instructors and students can find the supplemental information they need; these are listed in the Teacher Manual.

Each Teacher Manual also describes how to conduct the project, how to develop problem-solving skills and awareness, and how to lead students into considering all sides of a situation. These are enduring life skills that children will use well beyond the completion of the unit.