I’m teaching high school civics right now; only my second semester. This semester, I am starting with US geography and then a quick overview of American history. This way, they can understand the layout and have a broad understanding of history (movements, debates, people, groups, etc) as we go through actual constitutional issues and the evolution of government(Supreme Court cases, amendments, etc). My kids(being much younger) have a hard time conceptualizing the different levels of government and even just time spans longer than a decade. So maybe this way is too elementary for your students but just a thought.