What is Case Maker?
Case Maker is a collection of 20 pre-made challenges ready to be used for 6th through 8th grade civics education projects. But that’s just the beginning.
Teachers that register for a free account may make copies of the pre-made challenges and completely customize them to suit their needs.
And each challenge, whether pre-made or custom, has a unique share code that teachers can give to students, so that students can review the challenge and make their own personal case on the topic.
WHAT CAN TEACHERS DO?
Teach Students to Think Like Detectives
Case Maker features 20 pre-made civics education challenges that can be used in a classroom today. Each Challenge has a Challenge Code to make it simple to share with your students.
From there, students can review the challenge, add annotations to the related primary source documents, and build a series of case folders.
When done, students can then use presentation mode to show off their work, or use their case as a reference for any sort of project.
Teachers who want to offer something more unique or specialized to their students can create a free Case Maker account and customize any available Challenge by changing the text and associated primary sources.
Once done, teachers can share their custom challenges via a unique code, exactly the way pre-made Challenges are shared.
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?
Take a Challenge, Gather Evidence, Make a Case
Each challenge is a story-driven mystery or question that engages students with a scenario that blends historical fact and current events.
Challenges features a descriptive story layer that sets the scene and encourages students to ask tough questions about meaning, author perspective, omitted facts, and unanswered questions.
Students enter a Challenge Code provided by their teacher to access a particular challenge.
Once they have reviewed the challenge, students investigate related primary source documents from the Library of Congress to gain insights, then make their case – their take on the challenge – based on what they have seen, heard, read, considered, and felt.
Each student’s case is comprised of a series of folders where they can collect annotations; students make annotations by examining primary sources then choosing which portion(s) are relevant to their argument. They can move annotated source documents into different folders to organize their case.
Finally, when they’re done, students can either use the case they’ve created 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 directly.