Tomorrow night President Biden will give the annual State of the Union Address. C-SPAN Classroom offers more than one hundred resources for teaching and learning about The State of the Union Address in historical and current contexts. If you don’t have time to review all of the resources that C-SPAN Classroom offers (honestly, who does?), then just jump to this lesson plan. 

Lesson Plan: The State of the Union Address features a short video about this history of The State of the Union Address and three short clips of past addresses. There are guiding questions and a note-taking chart for students to use while watching the clips. For those of you who plan to have students watch all or part of President Biden’s 2023 State of the Union Address, the lesson plan includes templates for note-taking, a bingo board game to play while watching The State of the Union Address, and a list of guiding questions. 

Applications for Education

One of the things that I appreciate about C-SPAN Classroom’s Lesson Plan: The State of the Union Address is that it provides students with some historical context while also providing guidance for helping students identify current topics of importance to the country.