Growing Voters 2008

Elementary Grades

• Kid Reporters in Action
• Create Online Newspaper for "First" in White House
• Primary Students Use Primary Sources

Kid Reporters in Action

This activity is intended for younger students, Grades 1-3, although it could be adapted for upper level students. The focus of this lesson is on learning about how voters make their choices in the Presidential Election. In this activity the students become interviewers and go out to the community (parents, grandparents, teachers, principal, soccer coach, etc.) to discover the most important election issues and whom these adults are planning to vote for and why.

Elementary students will learn the basic steps of choosing a president: how people decide whom to vote for, and what issues are most important in their communities. By reporting on the election themselves, students will also get to understand the process of how the campaign is reported in the news media and in polls.

Full activity and instructions: kid_reporters_in_action.pdf

Instructions for first-time downloaders.

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Create Online Newspaper for "First" in White House

History in the Making: The First in the White House

On November 4, 2008 Americans voters will elect either the first African- American into the White House as President or the first woman ever as Vice- President.

In this activity students create materials to explore the significance of these turning points in current American history.

Activity

Students will do internet research and in-person interviews on the subject of the first African-American or woman in office in the White House. Working in groups they will create a (Microsoft Word) newspaper to explore what they expect will happen when one of these two historic events takes place.

Through brainstorming the class can make decisions about what articles are needed and make the story assignments that go with them. The class can be divided into groups of reporters and writers/ editors / artists / publishers. (All can serve as distributors of the finished paper.)

Students can illustrate the newspaper with their own original artwork. Pictures can be digitally scanned and uploaded to the document or produced on paper and added to the printed newspaper.

Check with the school to see if the newspaper can go on the school's website. Students can also use an online blog to publish their work. An additional activity is to use voicethreads.com to have students record their news articles so that lower grade readers and English language learners can have access to their newspaper.

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Primary Students Use Primary Sources

Students use online primary resources to research and write a short paragraph about one of the past Presidential elections. The Library of Congress has a variety of great resources including speeches, music, photos, and letters. Have students work in pairs or groups and get a chance to click through sources that show actual documents and artifacts from past Presidents.

Particular websites are suggested on the Growing Voters link. Students can download photos, music, and cut and paste from letters and memoirs. Their paragraph should draw upon what they found from primary sources.

Students can also illustrate their paragraphs with their own artwork.

Optional extension: have students digitally scan in their paragraphs (or write them using Word or PointPoint) so that the whole class' work can be easily assembled and shown to others.

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