What's new
New lessons and changes, newest first.
October 18, 2026
Every lesson now has a projector view
A legislator's week was the last of the ten. It opens with the question the lesson is for, asked cold: a legislator's bills show nothing this week, were they doing nothing? Then the whole job, which mostly never touches their own bills, then the record, which is blank in most weeks, then the month-by-month table that shows whole months when it is nearly empty for almost everyone. It names no legislator anywhere, and your class reads its own Three. That completes all ten. Every lesson now has two views, the one you read before the class and the one the room sees, and each projector view is on its own address so you can put it on the wall without the answer key being one click away. The seven that need an account share one screen built from the lesson's own data, so a figure can never differ between the page, the screen and the handout.
October 18, 2026
Cosponsors and coalitions has a projector view
The sixth of the seven lessons that need a free account. It opens by making the room choose: fifty cosponsors from one party, or six from both, which bill is likelier to become law? The record answers it in a way most people do not expect. Bills whose cosponsors all came from the sponsor's own party did no better than bills with no cosponsors at all. So the thing that matters is not how many sign on. Then the harder half, which the lesson does not skip: the same table cannot tell you the cause, because sponsors look for partners on bills they think can pass and legislators sign on to bills that are already moving. The sharpest part is a single bill's signatures laid day by day against the week its committee met. The days settle the order and settle nothing else, and noticing that is the lesson.
October 18, 2026
Two chambers, one text has a projector view
The fifth of the seven lessons that need a free account, and the screen keeps this one in its own order. It opens with a question almost every room answers wrong, a bill passed the House and passed the Senate, is it a law, and then goes straight to three real bills rather than to the rule. The third of them passed both chambers and is not a law, and once the room has seen that, the rule explains itself. The numbers come last. It also shows what one chamber actually changed in another chamber's bill, with both official texts linked, which is the only place in these lessons where a class can see an amendment as a real difference in words. The page you read beforehand is shorter, and the explanation of why the same text is required moved to the screen, because it was never on the handout.
October 18, 2026
Reading a roll call has a projector view
The fourth of the seven lessons that need a free account. The screen takes two guesses first: of every 100 bills, how many ever get a vote with every name written down, and of the ones that became law, how many had one. Both answers are smaller than a room expects. Then the three ways Congress decides a question, how rare a recorded vote is, and the part that surprises people most: when there is a roll call it usually is not close. The question the lesson is really about comes after that. If a vote is already decided, why put every name on the record? The page you read beforehand is shorter, and several things moved to the screen rather than being dropped: how rare a roll call is, how lopsided most of them are, and the three questions on the worked votes including the arithmetic on the ones who did not vote. None of those were on the handout. The notes are blunt about the error this lesson invites: the page says a legislator did not vote and never says why.
October 18, 2026
What a hearing is for has a projector view
The third of the seven lessons that need a free account, and the one where the opening guess is the whole point. Ask a room what a committee hearing is about and almost everyone says a bill. In the last finished Congress, House committees held more than fifteen hundred hearings and fewer than a hundred were about a specific bill. The screen takes the guess first, then the count, then the four kinds of hearing, then what happens when a bill does get one, and it stops to ask whether the hearing is what made the bill move. It is not, or at least the record cannot say so, and the notes explain why. The page you read beforehand is shorter, and one thing moved rather than being dropped: the table of who gets a hearing, and the caution that a hearing on the record is good evidence while the absence of one is weak evidence, are now on the screen. They were never on the handout, so if you run this lesson from paper alone, those come from you.
October 18, 2026
How a bill starts has a projector view
The second of the seven lessons that need a free account. Two views now: the one you read before the class, and the one the room sees. The second asks for a guess first, walks the hopper to the committee, shows what the record says about every bill introduced since 2013, and only then gives the number. The question the lesson is really about comes after that number rather than before it: if most bills never move, why introduce one? There is no single right answer and the notes say so. The page you read beforehand is shorter. The student reading moved to the screen and the handout, and the standards and the method are behind a click, because they are reference rather than preparation. What is left is the answers, what to expect a room to say, and the two things worth knowing first: an empty record is the normal finding, and a count of bills across decades is not a count of ideas.
October 15, 2026
The floor has a projector view
The first of the seven lessons that need a free account to get one. There are two views now: the one you read before the class, and the one the room sees. The second takes the guesses first, then walks the three roads through the House, the two that carry almost all of it, and what the Senate does instead, which is usually not to vote at all. It is on its own address as well, so you can put it on the wall without the answer key being one click away. The page you read beforehand is shorter. The student reading moved to the screen and the handout, which are the two places a class meets it, and the standards and the method are behind a click because they are reference rather than preparation. What is left is the answers, what to expect a room to say, and the two things worth knowing first: the fast road needs a higher share of the chamber than the slow one, and most bills have not passed anything at all.
October 14, 2026
Who holds the gavel has a projector view
The third lesson to get one. There are two views now: the one you read before the class, and the one the room sees. The second asks what matters most for getting a bill out of committee, takes the guesses first, then sorts bills by one thing only, then turns to the chair, and then to the Congresses where the two chambers were held by different parties at the same time. It is on its own address as well, so you can put it on the wall without the answer key being one click away. The page you read beforehand is shorter. The two student readings moved to the screen and the handout, which are the places a class meets them, and what is left is the answers, what to expect a room to say, and the two cautions: a committee vote to report a bill is not a report, and a cross-party cosponsor goes with a bill moving without proving it moved it. The assignment stays on the page, because opened from a class page it lists that class's own bills, and so does the fourteen-year chart, which needs a desk and not a wall.
October 13, 2026
The projector view holds still, and the chart is readable from the back
Clicking from one screen to the next used to move the text up and down the page, because each screen centred itself and they are not the same height. Every screen now starts in the same place and reads downwards, so your eye stays where it was. The chart on One bill in forty was also too small to do its job. The bars were capped at less than half the width of the screen, which left the drop from 100 bills to the ones that became law as a difference of a few pixels. The bars now run the width of the screen in one shared lane, so the collapse is the first thing a room sees, and the two notes that were stranded out on the right sit under the bar each one is about.
October 13, 2026
Two kinds of measures has a projector view
It now works the way One bill in forty does. There are two views: the one you read before the class, and the one the room sees. The second opens with the question held back, asks how many of every 100 measures could never become law, and only then shows the eight prefixes and the split. It is on its own address as well, so you can put it on the wall without the answer key being one click away. The page you read beforehand is shorter. The student reading moved to the screen and the handout, which are the two places a class meets it, and what is left is the answers, what to expect a room to say, and the two things that trip people up: a joint resolution is a law in all but name, and the continuing resolution in the news is usually a bill.
October 13, 2026
One bill in forty says less, and the screen reads right
The teacher notes had grown to four sections that did one job, and two of them said the same thing in almost the same words. What is left is only what you cannot work out for yourself: where the bills actually die, what to expect when a class looks a bill up, the answers, and what you can expect a class to say about these particular numbers. The on screen view had a worse problem. The lesson is named after its own answer, and that name was printed above the opening question, so the room could read it before anyone had guessed. It is gone from that view, the text now sits in the middle of the screen instead of below it, and the link to the full projector view sits on the same tab rather than on the other one. The question the lesson is built around now heads the page as well, where it belongs.
October 11, 2026
A recess is not still
The line at the top of a class page said to expect the numbers to hold still until Congress came back. That is false for two of the seven columns, and the page was contradicting itself: two days into this recess it already showed a bill action and a cosponsor from the other party. Bills are introduced and cosponsored on every day a chamber meets, including the short pro forma days when almost nobody is there, so those two numbers keep moving the whole time. What stops is floor business. Checked against the record two ways on October 11: in the first week of this recess every single event was a filing, and roll calls, chamber passages and committee reports were all zero from October 2 onward, four days before the recess officially began. The banner now says which half keeps going and which half waits, which is a better thing for a class to read in a quiet month than a promise that nothing will happen.
October 9, 2026
The class page is a daily look again
Three things came off it. The paragraph explaining that the record fills in every weekday morning, which a teacher opening the page every morning does not need told every morning, and which the demo still carries for anyone seeing it for the first time. The lesson it suggested for the week, because the page is somewhere a class starts its day, not a lesson. The prep card itself, which singled out one bill and asked questions about it. And the four Since choosing tiles, because every one of those four numbers is already a column in the tables underneath. What stays is what a room actually looks at: the two groups, the six legislators, what each of them did, and the badges. The line saying when the class chose and when the record was last counted stays too, because that is the one thing the tables do not say, and it now sits beside the class name instead of taking a row of its own. What Congress is doing is the first thing on the page, above everything, because in a recess it explains the zeros underneath it. The line describing the two group tables, and the legend for their short headings, belong to both tables rather than either, so each prints once across the pair instead of twice. And the Method note is three points rather than a paragraph of seven sentences: where the figures are read from, that a bill counts once in a column however many times it moved there, and that one column counts cosponsors rather than bills. The rest of it either repeated the line above the tables or promised something the page does not do anyway. The last 30 days window lost its heading and the paragraph under it: three different blocks on that one tab were saying the figures are the same for every class, and the tab itself says which window the page is on. The note about which figure is marked describes both tables rather than printing under each of them. And Your Three, the table of the three legislators every school already has, keeps the full width of the page but no longer packs its seven counts against the right edge behind a name column holding two short strings. The counts are spread across the page, which is what the same table at half width has always done underneath it.
October 8, 2026
An exit ticket on every lesson
Every handout now ends with one question a student answers in two minutes from that sheet alone, with room to write. Each one aims at the thing the lesson exists to correct, not at recall: whether a 425 to 0 vote still needed a roll call, why the House road that needs two-thirds is the fast one, whether a legislator active one week in four works one week in four. None of them repeats a question already on the sheet. The answer, and what a right one has in it, is on the lesson page with the rest of the key.
October 8, 2026
How the site states its neutrality
The footer on every page, the About page and one lesson objective all ended with some form of "what happened, not who was right". It was meant to say that the site does not take sides, but it presupposes that someone was right and someone was not, which is the argument these lessons stay out of. The footer now says every figure comes from the public record, dated the day it was read, which is the thing you can actually hold the site to. About says the lessons describe what happened and show a student where to look it up. Nothing about what the lessons teach has changed.
October 8, 2026
Every word a lesson assumes, defined
The lessons introduced terms like ordered to be reported, original cosponsor and suspension of the rules and never collected them anywhere, so a student who lost one mid-assignment had nowhere to look. One bill in forty, Two kinds of measures and Who holds the gavel now open their handouts with the words that lesson uses, defined in the words the lesson uses, and each lesson page lists what it assumes so a teacher can see it before the period starts. Help has the whole list. All of it comes from one file, so a word cannot mean one thing on a handout and another on the help page. The seven badge lessons do the same, and their word list is on the lesson page whether or not you are signed in, because what a lesson assumes is not part of the lesson.
October 8, 2026
The lessons page says the badge, and the right date
The lessons page carried one date for all ten lessons and called it what they were current to. It was true of two. Each lesson now prints the date its own figures were generated, taken from the same file that lesson reads, so the list and the lesson agree. Each badge also shows its own icon beside the lesson it opens, and beside its row in which badge opens which lesson. Three smaller corrections: the page said every lesson has two student readings when Two chambers, one text has three, and that every assignment is on congress.gov when One bill in forty asks you to test a published claim instead. Student handout in each row is now the link it looked like, going to the handout rather than back to the lesson.
October 8, 2026
An answer key on every badge lesson
The seven lessons that come with the badges had assignments but, with one part-finished exception, no answer keys, so a teacher setting one as homework had nothing to mark it against. All seven have one now, at the end of the teacher's guide, numbered to match the questions on the handout students write on. Where a question has a real answer the key gives it, with every figure worked from the same records the lesson prints rather than typed in. Where the question is about the class's own bill, the key says what a right answer contains and which answers to send back, because the bill is different in every room. The keys stay on the teacher's page; the handout is unchanged.
October 8, 2026
Answer keys that match the questions
Two kinds of measures listed the assignment one way on the page and another way on the handout, and its answer key quietly used the handout's numbers, so a teacher reading the key against the page found it answering questions that were not there. The handout is the sheet students write on, so it owns the numbering now and the page describes the work instead of renumbering it. The key also gained the one question it had never covered. One bill in forty had no answer key at all, and now has one for all four of its handout questions, with every figure worked from the same table printed above it rather than typed in, so it cannot drift.
October 7, 2026
Try it now goes to the real thing
Until today every public link on the site landed in the demo, because there was nothing behind them yet. Try it in the header, Try it with your school in the footer, Set up your groups on the lessons page and the choosing page link in Help all open the real choosing page now. The demo has not gone anywhere: it is still the big button on the home page, because seeing a finished class takes a minute and setting one up takes a period, and it now offers a way across to the real page from its banner and from the end of the run.
October 7, 2026
Last 30 days says what it actually is
Four things on that tab. The paragraph describing the window printed once per group, word for word the same both times, and now prints once. It also still said these six, which stopped being true when your Three moved into a table of their own. The First here flag was showing there, which it should never do: it marks the group that reached a badge first, and nothing on that tab is earned by anybody. And the Method note at the foot of the page described the other window, so it now has one reading for each tab: since your group chose, or the last thirty days of the public record for the same legislators, whoever chose them.
October 7, 2026
One switch for the whole page
Since choosing and Last 30 days used to be a pair of tabs on each group's table, which looked like two switches even though they always moved together and the block of figures above them followed along too. There is one switch now, above your Three, and it turns the whole page: all three tables and every line of text that says which window it is reading. Your Three also have their own total row, like the two tables under them.
October 7, 2026
Since choosing numbers open the bills behind them
On the Last 30 days tab a number has always opened the bills it counts. On Since choosing it did not, because the only list the site held covered thirty days and your window starts the day your group chose, so the list would have disagreed with the number above it. The record now carries, for each of your six, the dates behind every count, and those files reach back as far as your class needs rather than a flat thirty days. So the numbers on that tab open too, and what you get is exactly what was counted. One of them says two things at once: the cross-party column counts cosponsors rather than bills, so it tells you how many signed on and how many bills they signed.
October 7, 2026
Your Three sit above both groups, once
The three legislators the building gives you were printed inside each group's table, the same three people with the same figures in both, which read as though each group had its own set of them. They now have one block of their own above the two groups, where they belong: the same for everyone in the class, counted from the day the class was saved. Each group's table shows the three that group chose and nothing else, and the one control that folds your Three away, to compare what the groups actually picked, still folds them out of the badge counts at the same time. The small figure under each of the four counts is labelled the same way now, Your Three with the building, because Your Three on its own was read as the three the group picked rather than the three the address gives you.
October 7, 2026
Since choosing fills in, legislator by legislator
The Since choosing tab used to print a dash in every cell, with the group's real totals in a sentence below it, because the weekly count only ever worked out a figure for the group as a whole. It now works one out for each legislator as well, so that tab reads like the Last 30 days tab beside it: seven columns for each of your six, and the row at the bottom adding to the same figure the sentence gives. The numbers do not open the bills behind them on this tab yet, because the bill lists cover the last thirty days rather than the window since your group chose, and a list that did not match its number would be worse than none. Three smaller things on the same page. The block of four figures above the table was headed Since you chose while the tab under it said Since choosing, and the block told you to click a tab by a name it did not use. Both now read Since choosing. And the time of the last count is printed in Eastern rather than in your own time zone, so two teachers in different states reading the same class page see the same time for the same count, which is also the clock Congress keeps. And when both groups' bills are at the same stage, which most weeks they are, the explanation and the three questions under The prep print once under both cards rather than word for word in each. Each card keeps its own bill, sponsor and link, and when the two bills are at different stages the words differ and each card carries its own again. The questions were always meant for the whole room, not for one group.
October 7, 2026
When a bill has no text yet, the page says so
Open the bills behind any number and a freshly introduced one now reads text not posted yet in place of the Read the bill link. Nothing is wrong with those bills. A bill gets its page on congress.gov the day it is introduced, with its sponsor, its committee and its actions, but the printed text is published separately and the Congressional Research Service writes its summary only after that. Most bills in any given week sit at this stage, so an empty page is worth reading as the first thing on a bill's record rather than as a broken link. Status and actions still opens, because that part is there from day one.
October 7, 2026
Which group got there first, on your dashboard
Your classes page now reads like the class itself. Each group shows the three it chose, the badge row for its six, and the most recent thing those six did since the class was saved. Under any badge a group reached before the other, the word 1st appears, and when both reached it the same day it says Tie instead. Tap the badge for the group name and the date. The bill number opens that bill on congress.gov, so you can read the record behind the line without leaving the page you are on. Renaming a class or a group now happens behind a Rename button, so the page sits still until you ask to change something.
October 6, 2026
Save the class now, choose another week
Finding your school and choosing three legislators no longer have to happen in the same period. Once your school is found you can save the class there and then: you get your class code, and your Three start counting from that day, before anyone has chosen anything. When the group is ready, open the class from your dashboard and pick three more. Until it does, the class page says so rather than showing an empty table, and the week's prep reads from your Three, so there is something real to read in the meantime. Coming back to finish a saved class keeps that class's code in front of you the whole time, so there is nothing to go looking for.
October 5, 2026
Each group's six, in one table, on two tabs
The class page used to list the three a group chose with a sentence of figures under each name. It now shows all six, your Three with the building on top and the three the group chose below, in the same table the class chose from: bills, out of committee, passed, cross-party, hearings, roll calls and laws, with every number a link to the bills behind it. Two tabs sit over it. Since choosing is what the badges count, only what these six have done since this group picked them. Last 30 days is the public record for the same six, the same for every class, so a class set up today has something real to read before its first count. The badges follow whichever tab you are on, and your Three fold out of both tables, both totals and both badge rows with one click, so you can compare the three each group chose.
October 5, 2026
The two groups compare, one measure at a time
Each table ends in a total row, and on the last 30 days the higher figure in each column is marked. Nothing is added together: a group is often ahead on bills and behind on cross-party cosponsors, which is the comparison worth having. Each badge also says which group reached it first and when, read from the bills' own dates, or Tie when both got there the same day. Your school's Three now show their real names everywhere instead of an id, and the demo carries your class name, your group names and your Three straight through to the sample class page.
October 5, 2026
The home page says what a week actually looks like
The three steps now name what they count: the site picks twelve of the busiest legislators, each group reads their records and chooses three to follow. The what-to-expect panel says what the setup period is for, where your Three come from and how to choose the rest, and the dates the bills come from now sit above the card instead of inside it.
October 5, 2026
Which badge opens which lesson
The Lessons page now lists all nine badges in the order a bill travels, what each one takes to earn, what it asks the class to notice, and the lesson it opens. Each lesson names its badge too, so the week a group earns one you can see at a glance which period it leads into.
October 3, 2026
The week's lesson follows the badge
When a group earns a badge, the class page now suggests that badge's own lesson for the week. Before this it could only suggest three of the ten lessons, so a class could be pointed at the same one for weeks while the lesson its badge had just opened sat unmentioned.
October 3, 2026
What to expect over a semester
The home page and Help now say how long this runs, what it covers and what it does not, and what happens when you miss a week. Including the quiet stretch: across six finished Congresses, October of an election year is the slowest month that lands in a school term.
October 3, 2026
The time the record came in
The class page used to say which day the record was last counted. It now says the time as well, in your own time zone, so you can tell at a glance whether this morning's count has run yet.
October 3, 2026
Corrections across the lessons
A full reread fixed statements that were wrong or went too far. Who holds the gavel no longer says a cross-party cosponsor causes a bill to move, and its list of stopped bills now leaves out bills that passed anyway. The floor adds the discharge petition, Two chambers adds the pocket veto, Cosponsors and coalitions shows the exact days support arrived, and Two kinds of measures moves its answers off the student handout into a teacher answer key.
October 3, 2026
Two chambers, one text now starts with the bills
The three bills open the lesson, the rule comes second and the numbers last, and the lesson now shows what the Senate actually changed in one of them, with links to both texts. If it reads better in the room, the other lessons will follow.
October 3, 2026
Every class on your dashboard
Saving a class now needs a free teacher account, so every class you set up is on your dashboard and there is nothing to bookmark. You can still look and pick before signing in. Students still need no account.
October 3, 2026
More than one class from the same computer
After you save a class, Set up another class starts the next one on the same page; the first stays saved. And when you are signed in, the choosing page only shows classes saved to your account, even on a shared computer.
September 30, 2026
Finding your school by city
The school search now asks for the city first. A ZIP still works, but it only finds schools in that one ZIP, and the page now says so when you use one.
September 29, 2026
Seven new lessons, one for each badge
What a hearing is for, Reading a roll call, How a bill starts, The floor, Cosponsors and coalitions, Two chambers, one text, and A legislator's week. Open them with a free teacher account. The student handouts are always open, with no sign-in.
September 29, 2026
A page for your teacher account
Change your email or password, keep your school saved for next time, pick an icon, or delete the account.
September 28, 2026
Class pages update every weekday
Each class page now adds what its legislators did on the record every weekday morning.