As a poly sci junkie, I’m torn.

The 2018 government shutdown is bad for just about everybody. And it seems like it happened over something that most Americans want to see happen – protection for Dreamers. A Fox News poll says 86% of us support DACA. A CBS poll reports 87% supporting the idea.

But the shutdown does create an opportunity to jump into all sorts of conversations involving civics and procedure and policy and elections and checks and balances and three branches and  media bias . . . well, you get the idea. If you haven’t already, this week might be a good time to jump ship on your scheduled curriculum and spend some time making connections to the government side of the social studies.

Need a few quick resources?

• Start with this helpful immigration / DACA site from ProCon.
• Share an article on the shutdown with differentiated reading levels from Newsela.
• This National Geographic article has discussion and writing prompts, impacts of the shutdown, and a handy toolkit at the bottom.
• The C-Span site has a short video clip and vocabulary.
• Use this lesson from the New York Times Learning Network to expand the conversation beyond just the shutdown
• PBS explains what happens during a shutdown
• Teaching Kids News has a great overview, writing prompts, resources, and grammar lesson.
• The fact checkers at PolitiFact put together a quick unbiased article on the impact of the shutdown.
• This Politico article highlights some of the problems that intentional and unintentional bias can cause in news coverage.

I’d love to add to the list. What tools are you using?