US GOVERNMENT MUSEUM

WELCOME TO THE US GOVERNMENT MUSEUM Thank you for taking the time to visit us today! This museum is here to help you learn all about the three branches of the United States government. Go into the elevator and decide which floor to visit!

Judicial Branch Floor Under Construction Come back again later! 3 Judicial Branch 2 Legislative Branch 1 Executive Branch

Click on the white buttons to learn more! Executive Branch – Floor 1 Responsibilities Click on the white buttons to learn more! The president lives in the White House with his or her family. The first president to live in the White House was John Adams. There are three requirements to become president. You must be over 35 years old, be born in the USA, and have lived here for at least 14 years. The first president was George Washington. The plane that the president flies on is called Air Force One. The president is the leader of the executive branch. There have been 44 presidents so far. The president must work with the other branches. No branch has too much power. This system is called checks and balances. The president works in the Oval Office. He serves a four year term. He can serve up to two terms.

Click on the white buttons to learn more! Executive Branch – Floor 1 The president gets to appoint judges to the federal court and then they are approved by Congress. Executive Branch Main When disasters strike, the president leads the country through them. The president is in charge of relations with other countries. The president has the power to approve or veto laws that are created by Congress. The president is the head of the United States military. Click on the white buttons to learn more!

Click on the white buttons to learn more! Legislative Branch – Floor 2 Responsibilities Click on the white buttons to learn more! Congress meets in the Capitol building in Washington, DC. Many times the House and the Senate meet separately but sometimes they meet together. When they do, it’s called a joint session. The first US Congress started working in March 1789. There were 26 senators then. To be a representative in the House, you have to be at least 25 years old and a US citizen for at least 7 years. To be a senator in the Senate, you have to be at least 30 years old and a US citizen for at least 9 years. All senators and representatives have to live in the state they represent. There are 435 representatives in the House. Each representative represents 690,000 people in that state. The more people in a state, the more representatives. They serve a 2 year term. There are 100 senators in the Senate. Each state gets 2 senators. They serve a 6 year term. Congress is part of the legislative branch. There are two parts to Congress – the Senate and the House of Representatives. Congress must work with the other branches. No branch has too much power. This system is called checks and balances.

Legislative Branch – Floor 1 Senate House of Representatives Legislative Branch Main The Senate is in charge of approving or rejecting judges and officials that are picked by the president. The House of Representatives has the power to create new taxes. The Senate is in charge of approving agreements with foreign countries. Both parts of Congress help make laws for the USA. They are the law making branch. The House of Representatives has the power to impeach a president if he or she does something wrong. Click on the white buttons to learn more!

Bibliography Taylor-Butler, Christine. The Congress of the United States. Trueflix. Scholastic, 2008. Web. Nov. 2016. <http://tfx.grolier.com/p/node-33060/01001870>. Taylor-Butler, Christine. The Presidency. Trueflix. Scholastic, 2008. Web. Nov. 2016. <http://tfx.grolier.com/p/node- 33060/01001873>. Assorted images all marked for reuse.

Reflection on Activity What a great idea to make a virtual museum of information! I think using a virtual museum would be a very effective way to teach and review material with students. By using hyperlinks, you could have the students interact with a wide variety of content. You could embed movie clips that they could watch. You could have different information pop up. You could have students navigate to websites about different information. The possibilities are endless and it provides the content in such an appealing and engaging way. It is much more dynamic than just navigating to websites. I could see this being very useful for students to create, as well. They could use some of the pre-created templates and insert their information. Utilizing this idea would be very dynamic in Google Slides. You could have a class museum and students could be adding their own slides and linking it to the triggers on the images and objects throughout the museum. They could be doing it collaboratively and simultaneously! With elementary, I don’t think I would have them create their own museum from scratch because of the time it would take. I wanted to make my museum from scratch so it was very time consuming. Because I had gotten so much practice with triggers, using them to link the content boxes to the white buttons on each museum image or object was pretty straight forward once I figured out which button was which. It was very interesting learning how to skew an image in PowerPoint to get it to look like it is on a wall that is going away from you. I loved learning about the advance shapes features and how to manipulate the points in a shape to create a room that looks three dimensional. I created this PowerPoint museum to help my fifth grade students review the branches of the US government and the head of each branch. Students have researched the presidency and Congress so far and so I chose to focus on those two floors. I wanted to break down the information into smaller chunks to help them really understand what each person/group does, how to become a member of that group, and how they work together. I think the museum format was the perfect way for me to convey that information in a manageable and engaging way for the my students.