Growing Voters 2008

High School Grades

• "Spin Room" media simulation
• Create "Why Vote" pamphlet
• Why Vote? Civic Lemonade Stand
• Students Blog the Issues
• Make campaign ads
• Students conduct survey

"Spin Room" media simulation

The best way for students to see behind the curtain of media Oz is to create it themselves. Once students play the role of interpreting and analyzing the candidates and issues, as "spinners", they can immediately grasp it as opinion rather than fact.

Students will be put into teams:

• Democratic Party Prep Team to prepare and support Senator Barak Obama in the debate
• Republican Party Prep Team to prepare and support Senator John McCain in the debate.
• Media Consultants Republican Team to develop "spin" analysts for the post debate follow-up media room.
• Media Consultants Democrats Team to develop "spin" analysts for the post debate follow-up media room.
• Journalists Team to generate questions in advance and then conduct interviews with spin experts following the debate in the media room.
• Video Crew Team (optional) to use webcams or video camera to film debate plus spin interviews.
• Suggested extension assignment: use the same raw film footage and student crews or journalists in print edit two different "stories" or debate coverage each showing different conclusions (or spin) with the same material.

Full activity and instructions: candidate_debate_with_spin_room.pdf

Instructions for first-time downloaders.

page toc

Create "Why Vote" pamphlet

Overview

In this activity, students will create and use their own materials to learn about the voting process, explore the reasons that people should vote, and take part in a community drive to promote voting. Students will learn through direct hands-on experience why voting is important and become aware of why some citizens decide not to vote. Once students are distributing their pamphlets and speaking to voters in their community, students are participating in the actual political process even before reaching voting age.

This activity can be expanded or reduced to make it appropriate for a range of grades.

Full activity and instructions: Why_Vote_Pamphlet.pdf

Instructions for first-time downloaders.

page toc

Why Vote? Civic Lemonade Stand

Students in a class (Middle School or High School and organized as age- appropriate) have the assignment to produce a WHY VOTE pamphlet of their own. Websites with various resources are provided in our activity. See the Growing Voters list.

The students come to some decisions about what the content should be. That right there is pretty important: their own answers to why someone eligible to vote should do so. For the pamphlet, some students will be interested in writing the content, some about layout, others about art work, and still others about production itself: the students take ownership of the Why Vote pamphlet.

This Civic Lemonade activity deepens the impact. This part of the activity is for students in groups to take their Why Vote? pamphlet out into the public; to a school event, to a mall, out on the sidewalk in front of their school, to a sporting event, etc.

In lemonade stand fashion, students distribute not a given pamphlet from an organization (like the League of Women Voters' materials), but their very own creation. With that they get engaged in the civic process. When they ask a passing adult "excuse me, are you going to vote on November 4th?"; or "May I give you the voting pamphlet that my class made?" and they have a dialogue with the person who stops, right then, it happens: they are participating in the political process.

Full activity and instructions: Civic_Lemonade_Stand.pdf

Instructions for first-time downloaders.

page toc

Students Blog the Issues

Overview

More and more media organizations include blogs on the election so why not have our students do likewise with their own versions? It is a powerful learning format when students grapple with their own analysis of electoral issues and are in a position to make their views known to others. Online resources are valuable tools for collaboration and sharing across classes, schools, and communities. There are available Blog sites which are free, safe and easy to use. Furthermore, high school students may already be familiar with these tools!

Activity

1. The students will work in pairs to research and list issues that are being debated by the candidates in the presidential election. The Growing Voters Web Resources lists a number of good sites to support this research.
2. Student pairs should identify the issues that they feel are the most important.
3. The class can then brainstorm and divide up the issues among groups interested in taking responsibility for each selected issue cluster (or sub- divide them as necessary). The students will include the candidates' stance on each of the selected issues.
4. Volunteers can form to work with the teacher to set up the blog space itself (and in consultation with the rest of the class, time and interest permitting).
5. The student issue groups plan their blog entries. If desired, the teacher can have each group briefly present their main ideas to the class.
6. Each issue group goes online and posts their blog entries based on their research, analysis and opinion on the key election issues.
7. The class distributes the blog web address (url) to another class, to friends, to another school, etc. as decided by individual class circumstances and preferences. Teachers can also arrange for this process in advance.
8. Students check the blog for posted commentaries and students respond to posts on their blog.
9. Class discussion on the interaction and commentaries from others: what surprised them about the process? What kinds of reactions did they get? What questions did they get and/or ask of other bloggers?

These issue analyses can be blogged; this can be made into a wiki and traced through after the election; and these analyses can also be made into Podcasts. Various online tools sites provided from Growing Voters website.

An alternative approach is to continue the blog as election coverage throughout the campaign with the polls, forecasts, predictions and then compare with what actually occurred when the results in November become available. Students can ask what aligned with expectations or did not and WHY? Blogs can also be used to trace the transition to a new administration.

page toc

Make campaign ads

Students working in groups design and produce campaign commercials for each candidate. Videos can be viewed on a number of safe and reliable websites, like the independent Real Clear Politics. See the Growing Voters list for references. Students can download clips which can be used to construct new commercials.

Students can also video their own original production and edit it together into their own campaign commercial. Using even a digital camera with short "video capture" or loading short clips from the internet, free online software at eyespot.com allows students to easily storyboard and edit together a short video with text.

At Eyespot.com, (login username "Growing Voters"), videos can be stored online where they are easy to view, show, and share.

For extension activities, link to a discussion about demographic questions and electoral college and/or "battleground states".

page toc

Students conduct survey

Overview

Students Design, Create and Analyze results of their own poll

The Presidential campaign is full of constant reports about public opinion towards the candidates and attitudes on the issues. These are mostly based on results of national polls conducted by a variety of sources for various purposes. In this activity students will get behind the national statistics and see how data on public opinion is generated. By designing their own poll, students will see the importance of what questions are asked and how they are asked, what data is collected and how it is analyzed. As students analyze and present their own data, they understand the wider role of public opinion in the Presidential election process.

Activity

Divide the class into teams or groups for design, creation, distribution, and analysis.

Full activity and instructions: Students_Conduct_Own_Poll.pdf

Instructions for first-time downloaders.

page toc