Election Lesson Plans & Ideas

Regardless of how you feel about the upcoming election, I feel that as a teacher, it is my duty to teach my students about the election.  I think that it's important to teach students early, that voting is a privilege, and that they can make a difference.  I started my election unit today and on Friday we will hold a mock election.  I won't be at school Monday or Tuesday, due to a teaching conference, so we will take this opportunity to learn about early voting.  In case anyone is still planning, I thought that I would share what we've been doing so far.  

I took the plunge and finally purchased Scholastic News for Grade 1 for my classroom.  After logging on line to watch some of the videos that accompany the issue, I made a great discovery...

I'm not entirely sure why, but for a limited time, you can access the online issues.  I know that with my subscription I will be able to do this, but for right now, it's free for everyone.  I only checked first grade, so I can't say for sure for other grades.  Just follow the links below to check and see.  

I was able to pull up each issue on my classroom Promethean Board and click on interactive parts to learn about vocabulary and play interactive games.   For the election issue, you can view videos for each candidate too.  One option that we really enjoyed was being able to change the audio on the videos and text to Spanish.   I have a high ESL population in my class so I played both versions for my students.  They really enjoyed hearing the videos in Spanish.  

After learning different facts about each candidate, we created a Double Bubble map to show what we learned.  To create the Double Bubble map I used pictures and titles from Gladys Hooray for Election Day Unit.There are more fantastic ideas in this unit than there is time! 

The rest of the week, we will focus on writing about each candidate and then writing about who we think our next president should be.  Friday, we will predict who we think will win, we will hold a mock election,  and we will analyze our data.  For homework, each child was asked to go home and find the candidates on TV.  I told them to tell their families some of the fun facts that we learned.  Tonight I shared all the fun facts with my family over dinner and they seemed super impressed! 

To view the online Scholastic News Issues and videos, click on the link below. 

Scholastic News Election Issue and Videos