Challenging Constitutional Rights

We present an instructional strategy called Challenging Constitutional Rights, in which high school civics students critically interacted with, and interpreted, constitutional rights. As an alternative assessment project, students used technologies to make visual and oral presentations on the relationship between a current event and a right detailed in an amendment to the U.S. constitution. In this article, we describe the process of the project, detail the strengths of the project organized around the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Vision of powerful teaching and learning, and conclude with reflections from the teacher who designed and implemented this project. Exemplars of student work are included.