Lesson Plan

8 Grade Civics: The Bill to Law Process

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SOLs:
CE.6c: The student will demonstrate knowledge of the American constitutional government at
the national level by
c) explaining and/or simulating the lawmaking process;

Essential Questions:
What are the different steps of the bill to law process?
How do congressional committees function?
What is the role of the vice president and the congressmen in the bill to law process?
How do checks and balances affect the laws that come into place?

Learning Targets:
I can explain the significance of checks and balances in the United States.
I can explain the role of congressional committees in the lawmaking process
I can explain the steps of the bill to law process in both the house of representatives and in the
senate.
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1. Greet the students at the door and direct them to start answering the warm up question
in their Civics journal when they walk into the classroom. Todays question is a review of
last class What is the primary function of the legislative branch? Who makes up the
legislative branch?
2. Go over the answers to the warm up as a class. Draw sticks with the student names on
then to increase the amount of attention paid and to get more students involved. Ask
them to write down their homework and then put away their binders.
3. Start by watching the School of Rock How a Bill Becomes a Law video twice so they
can get an understanding of the process before the activity.
4. Have each student assigned the role of either congressmen, speaker of the house, vice
president or president. Show the students their assignment and have them split the room
with the Senate on the left and the House on the right. The president will sit in the front.
5. Break the students up into committees and give them all a topic for their committee.
Make the topics relevant to the school. For example: the sports committee, the bus
committee, the afterschool club committee, etc.
6. Ask every person in the committee to write out an idea for a bill on a piece of paper that
relates to their committees interests
7. Then, have the committees meet together and decide which ones to pass and which
ones to fail.
8. Next, send the passing bills to the main floor then over to the other house.
9. Make sure all of the steps of the bill to law process are complete before the bills go to
the president
10. After the activity, the students will complete a class discussion on the activity and debrief
with what they learned from it.
11. Lastly, issue a brief quiz/ticket activity asking them to write down the steps of the bill to
law process with explanations of each step.
12. Review the ticket activity to see what needs to be reinforced briefly the next day.