The Executive Branch (Article II)

The through-line

What powers does Article II actually give the President, and who else holds executive power?

Content overview

Article II from the constitutional text outward: how the President is chosen and qualified, the argument over the Electoral College, the roles the office actually plays, the making of foreign policy and the Commander in Chief power, the cabinet and executive agencies that carry the work out, and how North Carolina divides executive power differently.

How to use the lesson pages

• Seven lessons, each teaching one concept: 1 Article II and the presidency, 2 the Electoral College, 3 the hats of the president, 4 foreign policy and Commander in Chief, 5 the cabinet and executive agencies, 6 North Carolina's executive branch, 7 unit review, and 8 the unit test. The first six map onto the note topics the source page lists for itself, with the Electoral College given the day its Major Assignment warrants.
• Every lesson offers three tracks — Honors, Standard, Foundational — selectable on the page. All three share the same objective and the same two key questions and run the full period; what changes is scaffolding, pace, and how much a student reads and produces alone.
• Each resource has one home. This was the most repetitive source of the five: the "Hats of the President" check-for-understanding appeared on four separate days, the two presentation decks on three each, and the West Wing episode on four — three of those as a bare title with no link.
• There are no dates and no per-period markers. The source carried "4-29-24", "12/1/25", "TEST TUESDAY", "CNN10 - Monday", "(P3)" and "(Pd 1)"; the substance survives, the scheduling does not.
• The unit test is not on the saved page — the page announces one ("TEST TUESDAY") without linking it. The teacher supplied it separately, and it sits on Lesson 8 after Lesson 7's review and reflection.
• Two note topics the page lists for itself — "Cabinets" and "Presidential Advisers and Executive Agencies" — have no deck linked anywhere. Lesson 5 is built around the President's Cabinet Chart, which is the only real artefact for that content, and says plainly that the presentations are named but not provided.
• Standards are a gap, as in Unit 4. This page lists none — the "Objectives:" bullets on its first three days are objective statements, not NC codes. Executive-branch structure belongs mostly to the CL.C&G.1.x and 2.x standards, which could not be verified from any source in this repo, so a standard appears only where a verified code from the Unit 1 and Unit 3 pages genuinely fits. Worth filling in against the official document.
• The source leaves several things blank and they are left blank: an "Essential Question:" label with nothing after it on four days, a "Ticket OTD - TBD", and a "Do Now - TBD".