The New Jersey State Bar Foundation’s three blogs are great resources for teachers who are teaching remotely during the Covid-19 virus crisis.
The posts on all three blogs—The Informed Citizen, The Legal Eagle Lowdown & The Respect Rundown—contain discussion questions and relevant glossary words for ready-made lesson plans that start a conversation. Written in plain language, these posts help students better understand the subject matter and enhance class discussion.
Our Civics Blog
On The Informed Citizen, our civics blog, we’ve covered more than 25 civics-relate topics, including democratic norms, origins of political parties, equal justice under the law, primaries & caucuses and impeachment.
Posts are added to The Informed Citizen periodically throughout the school year. Subscribe to The Informed Citizen and we will send you an email advising when a new post has been added.
Our Subscription-Based Publications
All back issues of our subscription-based publications—The Legal Eagle, our legal newspaper for kids, and Respect, our diversity newsletter—are available from the Publication Page on our website. Just open the relevant toggle and download the pdf. (There is also a Civics Publications toggle that might interest you.)
We’ve also made it easy for you if you would just like to use a particular article from the issue. On our update blogs for the publications (The Lowdown & The Rundown), you will find the articles for the most recent issues posted individually.
More Civics
The NJSBF also has several stand alone civics publications. Our latest, Beyond the Bill of Rights, is a 24-page newsletter that focuses on the 17 Amendments added to the U.S. Constitution after the Bill of Rights was passed in 1791. NOTE: All the articles in Beyond the Bill of Rights are also posted individually on The Informed Citizen blog.
If you’re looking for material on the Bill of Rights, check out our Bill of Rights Bulletin. This 24-page newsletter is packed with articles on the amendments contained in the Bill of Rights, as well as crossword puzzles, word searches and constitutional trivia. And, if you’re looking for a New Jersey connection, Constitutionally New Jersey is a 12-page newsletter devoted exclusively to the New Jersey Constitution.
All of these publications are available on our website for download (pdf format). Go to our Publication Page and open the Civics Publications toggle. When things are back to normal, you can also order hard copies of the publications (with the exception of Constitutionally New Jersey) with our Publication Order Form.
Any questions, contact Jodi Miller via email at jmiller@njsbf.org.