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Lesson Plan

Representing Our Nation

Main Subject Area: Social Studies

Duration of Lesson:  45 minutes

Keywords:

  • Congress
  • Penny
  • State Representatives

Brief Description:

    Students will use pennies to illustrate how our states are represented in Congress. This lesson is to be implemented during a unit covering the branches of United States government.

National Standard(s):

  • Power, Authority, and Governance

Additional Subject Area Standard(s):

Objectives:

    Students will learn about state’s representation in the U.S. government.

Materials (online):

Materials (offline):

    Map of the United States for each group of 4-5 students

    A bag of 485 pennies for each group

Coins Used in Lesson:

    Circulating U.S. Cents

Grade Level(s):   6-8  

Procedures (online):

Procedures (offline):

    Prior to this lesson, students should be introduced to the Legislative branch of the U.S. government. The students should understand the role of the legislative branch (to make the laws for our country), the differences between the roles of those who serve in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

    1. Divide your class into groups of 4-5 students.

    2. Instruct each group to research and list the number of representatives their own state has in both the House of Representatives as well as in Congress.

    3. Once they have found this information, distribute a set of coins and a map to each group.

    4. Instruct each group to add the representatives from their state together and count out the same number of pennies as representatives. One penny will denote each Congressperson.

    5. Ask the groups to place their pile of pennies on top of the state that they live in.

    6. Once each group has done this with their home state, have them divide the remaining 49 states amongst the group members. Each team member should research the number of representatives from each state in their set.

    7. When the students have finished their research have them create and place separate stacks of pennies (as done in steps 4 and 5) on each state, to designate that state’s number of representatives.

    8. When students finish their map, have each group discuss their observations about the map and the stacks of pennies.

    9. After this discussion, have each student write a paragraph about any trends or patterns they notice. They should also write about why certain states have more or less representatives than others.

Assessment / Evaluation:

    Students can be evaluated on the accuracy of their map and also the observations about their map in their paragraph.

Differentiated Learning Options:

    Rather than researching all the states, have students select three or four states of different size and in different parts of the country.

    The students could create two separate maps, one for the Senate, and one for the House of Representatives. The groups could compare these two maps and discuss why they think the numbers of representatives are different in the two parts of Congress.


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