During the past two months 12th Graders in my Government classes have become Modern Day de Tocquevilles. After having spent the first quarter of the course inquiring about democracy we used Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America as a model for students to research and present detailed observations and analysis about the state of democracy in the United States today. This project has allowed students to deeply research topics of interest as they learn about modern day issues relating to US government and society.
Students have each written three chapters. Each chapter includes text and a multimedia component. This is the doc that I used to share potential topic ideas and some sources for research.
Stay tuned for the link to some amazing examples of student work! (Coming next week…)
Mr J Block 
I know I am late to the game, but I would love to find “some amazing examples of student work! (Coming next week…)”. I looked but unfortunately I could not find the examples you speak of. May I know more?
I love that you are guiding an inquiry into democracy; it seems amidst all the bruhaha over common core and standardization, we have trully missed the boat on teaching our kids what democracy really is, and thus, by virtue of a significant LACK of active, participatory democracy, our country is for all intents and purposes now an oligarchy. (IMO, of course *grin*)
Charles — If you scroll to the bottom of my blog and click on the Student Work tag you can see examples…
Thanks!
awesomesauce, thanks much!