Master skills, explore new ideas, and build your teaching toolbox with free live, recorded, and on-demand training.
Learn about services designed to build educator capacity and cultivate dynamic educational experiences for students.
We’ve got answers. Visit our Support Desk to learn how to set-up and use your My iCivics Account.
Explore opportunities we’ve designed to create community and build your expertise.
Still stuck? Our Support team is standing by to help. Submit a request and we’ll be in touch.
Introduce students to the ideas and writings of John Locke that influenced the likes of Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers.
Meet the Baron de Montesquieu, one of the great thinkers of the 18th century. He spent a lot of time thinking about how governments should be created and maintained. These ideas…
Explore the ideas of Enlightenment thinker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His writings on natural and social freedom, the social contract, and democracy shaped the American system of…
We've heard a lot about the role the Founding Fathers played in the early United States, but what role did our Founding Mothers play? Discover the contributions of women in the…
"The First American", Benjamin Franklin, is the only Founding Father that signed all three major documents that founded the United States of America: the Declaration of…
Check out George Mason's role in the founding of the U.S. Even though he never served as a president and refused to sign the Constitution, Mason's work in Virginia and with the…
Review the variety of roles that George Washington played in America's early years. From commanding the Continental Army, to presiding over the Constitutional Convention, to…
Thomas Jefferson was the third president of the United States, but he played many political roles throughout our nation’s history. His political life influenced the country in many…
This mini-lesson digs into the 41 year political career of James Madison. Considered the author of the U.S. Constitution, Madison was a prime architect in creating a strong…
Look at the debate, and eventual compromise, between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists that occured around the creation of the U.S. Constitution.
After ten years under the Articles of Confederation, Americans realized they needed something different. Explore the major debates that occurred at the convention, as well as the…
As a new country, the United States experienced a lot of growing pains. Discover some of the citizen-led rebellions that occurred in the nation's first decades, and how the…
This mini-lesson covers the basics of the Supreme Court’s decision that affirmed the Court’s power of judicial review. Students learn how Congress tried to add to the Supreme…
Thomas Hobbes was one of the first of his era to discuss the idea of the social contract. Explore his views on government and his famous book, Leviathan.
No one person invented the kind of government that we have in the U.S. Check out two early governments that inspired the system that we have today: Athenian democracy, and the…
Students learn that you can't take constitutional language at face value. Those phrases we read in the Bill of Rights, such as "cruel and unusual punishment" or being a "witness"…
Students participate in a scripted fictional trial based on a real case in which the producers of James Bond films sued Honda for creating an ad that looked way too much like a…
iCivics presents a judicial variation of the classic card game "Go Fish!" that features the various trial court jobs. Students use a write-on courtroom game board and play with…
In this lesson, students compare Ben Brewer’s fictional case in “Supreme Decision” with a real-life case involving a student. Got a 1:1 classroom? Download fillable PDF versions…
Need to teach the judicial branch in a hurry? In this lesson, students learn the basics of our judicial system, including the functions of the trial court, the Court of Appeals,…
Lesson Plan