Grade 8 · US History · §113.20 · Problem-Based Learning
Philadelphia, 1787 — Can We Build a Government That Holds?
A Problem-Based Learning unit. Students step into the Constitutional Convention, take on a delegate's point of view, and work a real, ill-structured question — building from surface to deep to transfer learning. The teacher is a guide, not the answer key.
Driving question: The summer of 1787. The states have sent delegates to Philadelphia because the young nation's government is failing under the Articles of Confederation. But the delegates disagree fiercely — over representation, the power of a national government, and slavery. As a delegate, can you help build one framework the states will accept — and what will you compromise to do it?
The three-phase path (do them in order)
Problem-solving is a transfer move — it only works once students have knowledge to reason with. So the problem in Phase 3 is deliberately gated behind Phases 1 and 2.
⛔ Gate: don't open the Phase 3 problem until students have finished the surface and deep activities. Meeting the problem too early turns inquiry into guessing.
Big idea & objectives
Big idea: The Constitution was not handed down — it was argued into being through hard compromises among people with real, conflicting interests. Representative government is built by weighing competing goods.
Know: why the Articles of Confederation failed, what the Virginia and New Jersey Plans proposed, and how disputes over representation and slavery shaped the Constitution.
Understand: the same convention looked different from each delegate's point of view — and lasting government came from compromise, not from any one side winning.
Do: run the problem-solving process end to end — define a problem, gather information, weigh options, choose and defend a solution, and evaluate it (§113.20(c)(31)(B)).
Standards this unit is aligned to (§113.20)
TEKS SE
Where it lives in the unit
(c)(3)
Foundations of representative government — Surface vocabulary, Deep concept map
(c)(4) · (c)(5)
Political/economic issues & the failure of the Articles — Surface jigsaw
(c)(15)(A–B)
American beliefs & principles in the Declaration and Constitution — Deep sources, Transfer brief
(c)(16)
Purpose of amending the Constitution — Transfer (Bill of Rights) & debrief
(c)(21)
Importance of consensus & different points of view — Deep argument, Transfer debrief
(c)(29)(A–H)
Source analysis, points of view, claim + evidence — Deep & Transfer
(c)(31)(B)
The problem-solving process — the entire Transfer phase
Teacher prep & materials
Print the facilitator guide (teacher moves, map of possibilities, delegate role cards, debrief prompts) and the assessment pack (rubric + individual-in-group).
Chart paper or a projected space for three shared columns: Hunches · Know · Need-to-Know (the KWHL chart).
Vetted primary sources for investigation (district-approved). Suggested public-domain sources — the Constitution, the Virginia and New Jersey Plans, a Federalist excerpt — are listed in the facilitator guide.
No logins, no accounts — every page runs in the browser. Student writing and products live on paper or in tools your district already vets.
Aligned to (not reproduced from) 19 TAC Ch.113 §113.20; effect sizes from Visible Learning MetaX. This scenario dramatizes the real debates of the 1787 Constitutional Convention.