A lesson plan on presidential assassinations asks the question, "Who Cares For the President?"
Featured Book: The President Has Been Shot!: True Stories of the Attacks on Ten U.S. Presidents
, by Rebecca Jones
Theme: Citizenship and concern for each other.
Objectives:
- Students will explain how presidents and their actions can effect us as a community and as individuals.
- Students will identify bravery and concern for others in the actions of those in the community and in high office.
- Students will identify and describe how poor citizenship and lack of concern can effect others.
- Describe how presidential attacks have effected how we take care of our presidents and laws we have established.
Subjects/Developmental Areas:
- Social Studies
- Language Development
- Character Development
- Social or Moral Development
Activities/Discussion Topics:
- Gun control and murder (of private citizens or politicians)
- Death penalty/life in prison/insanity and life in asylum
- Twenty-year Curse—true or false
- Involvement of Mary Surratt, Squeaky Fromme, and Sara Jane Moore and their punishments
- Presidential acts of kindness: Theodore Roosevelt’s command not to hurt Scharnk; Franklin Roosevelt’s continuing his open car trips; Truman changing Collazo’s sentence to life imprisonment
- Presidential perseverance: Theodore Roosevelt gave his speech before going to the hospital, Franklin Roosevelt waited for the Mayor and continued his trip, Truman gave his speech that afternoon, Ford continued his trip.
- Heroes: People named and unnamed who risked their lives for others (people in the crowds, secret service agents, and sons of the secretary of state)
- Write newspaper headlines and articles about the attacks, the heroes, and the attackers.
- Write editorials about the punishments of the attackers/killers
- Make a chart listing the president attacked, the attacker(s), how many were hurt, the outcome and the punishment for the attacker(s)
- Interview someone who remembers an attempted assassination or John F. Kennedy’s assassination
- Pick an assassination and write how the death could have been avoided
- Mark a map with the places of assassinations, attacks (perhaps where the presidents died and were buried)
- Describe the measures we have developed to protect our presidents today
- Make a timeline showing the relationship between presidential attacks and legislation—James Garfield’s attack, illness and death-Presidential Succession Act, 1881-1886
Threats and death of McKinley and Secret Service reassignment, 1900-1901
James Garfield’s assassination and Civil Service Commission
John F. Kennedy and 25th amendment
Attempt on Ronald Reagan and the Brady Bill
You may also choose to use individual books about presidents who were assisnated or had serious attempts made on their lives.
