WHAT IS CASE MAKER?
Case Maker is a collection of 20 engaging civics challenges ready to use to help develop middle school civics skills. But that’s just the beginning. By registering for a free account, you can use or customize each pre-made challenge to suit your students’ needs. Each Challenge has a Challenge Code to make it simple to share with your students.
Each challenge comes with a unique code you can share with students so they can complete the challenge and build a case.
HELP YOUR STUDENTS THINK LIKE DETECTIVES
Begin by choosing a pre-made challenge, or customize your own.
Each Challenge includes a Challenge Code to make it easy to share with your students. From there, students begin the challenge by analyzing and annotating carefully chosen primary source documents to help build a case.
Students can show off their work using presentation mode, or use their case as part of a larger project.
CREATE A CASE MAKER ACCOUNT
Teachers who create a free Case Maker account can customize a Challenge by changing the text and the primary sources and share their custom challenges with students via a unique code. With an account, teachers can follow up on their students’ progress by opening a non-editable presentation view of any Cases made using any of their custom Challenge Codes.
Teachers: Find out more about using Case Maker in your classroom.
WHAT CAN STUDENTS DO?
TACKLE A CHALLENGE, GATHER EVIDENCE, MAKE A CASES
Each challenge is a story-driven mystery or question that engages students with a scenario blending historical fact and current events to encourage students to ask tough questions about meaning, author perspective, facts and omissions, and unanswered questions.
To begin, students enter a Challenge Code provided by their teacher to access a particular challenge. From there, students investigate related primary source documents from the Library of Congress and build a case based on what they have seen, heard, read, considered, and felt.
Each student’s case file contains a series of folders where they can examine primary sources and make annotations to choose which portion(s) are relevant to their argument. Students can organize their case files by moving annotated source documents into different folders.
After tackling the challenge, students can use their case as a reference for any sort of assignment (paper, talk, debate, etc.), or they can use Case Maker’s ready-made presentation mode to show off their work.