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Growing Voters 2008 Middle School Grades
Create "Why Vote" pamphletOverviewIn 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.pdfInstructions for first-time downloaders. Create Online Newspaper for "First" in White HouseHistory in the Making: The First in the White HouseOn 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. ActivityStudents 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. All politics is local: predict by countyALL POLITICS IS LOCALOverviewThere is a famous saying in politics which is that "all politics is local". In this activity students have the chance to look very closely at the local vote for President. The free online data available shows election results over time and broken down into counties, which makes it possible for students to quickly investigate their own state in detail. These numbers also give students a solid basis of prediction for the Fall vote. Full activity and instructions: All_politics_is_local.pdfInstructions for first-time downloaders. Kid to Kid: Older grades teach younger studentsOverviewA very effective way to learn material is to teach it to others. In this activity, students actively engage with content as they build their own teaching materials and present to a class in a lower grade. Instead of hearing passively about the significance of political parties in this country, here the students are asked to answer that question for themselves in preparation for explaining it to younger students. Older students will need to find out party platforms and candidate stances on issues so they can be informed presenters outside their classrooms. Full activity and instructions: kid_to_kid_presentations_middle_school.pdfInstructions for first-time downloaders. Students design and conduct surveyOverviewStudents Design, Create and Analyze results of their own pollThe 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. ActivityDivide the class into teams or groups for design, creation, distribution, and analysis. Full activity and instructions: Students_Conduct_Own_Poll.pdfInstructions for first-time downloaders. Civic Lemonade StandStudents 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.pdfupdated 10/08/08 | 10:09 AM
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