About

Lesson materials for teaching Congress from its own record.

What this is

Congress Classroom is a set of free lessons for social studies classes, grade 7 and up. Each one takes a single period. A class splits into two groups, and each follows six members of Congress: the one Representative and two Senators who serve its school, and three more it chooses. Every week, students work out what those six did from the bills, cosponsor lists and committee actions that Congress itself publishes.

There is nothing to install and nothing for a student to log into. A lesson is a page the teacher reads first and a handout the class works from, and a class page, reached with a six-character code, shows what each group's members did that week.

How the material is made

Every figure on this site is computed from public government records: the bulk bill-status files that the Government Publishing Office releases at govinfo.gov, which cover every measure introduced since the 113th Congress, and, for hearings, the committee-meeting records on congress.gov. The numbers are generated by scripts, never typed in by hand: the weekly board every Monday, the class pages every weekday morning. Each page prints the date its figures were current. The six finished Congresses alone hold 76,854 bills that could have become law. Where a figure has a caveat, the caveat is printed next to it, because learning to read the caveat is part of the lesson.

Neutrality, as a method

The lessons describe what happened, and show a student where to look it up. Party appears the way it appears in the record: which party held each chamber and chaired its committees, and which cosponsors came from the other side. No lesson asks a student to take a side, and no page on this site endorses a candidate, a party or a bill.

Who makes it

Congress Classroom is built by one person in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Teachers who try it are asked to say what did not work, and the lessons change when they do. It is independent: no political party, campaign, advocacy group or government office funds it or reviews it.

Contact

Write to hello@congressclassroom.com with questions, corrections or ideas. Shawn, the founder, reads every one.

Privacy

The school lookup sends a school name to the federal school directory and shows the answer. Nothing is stored, and there is no analytics service on this site. A signed-in teacher account sets one session cookie and can save a resolved school district; the full account is on the privacy page, in plain language.