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Election Lesson Plan | Track the Polls

As we get close to an election polls start getting released explaining how the various races look to be shaping up. This lesson plan helps students understand how those polls work.

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Subjects

  • Statistics
  • Civics
  • Current Events

Grade

  • 6-12

 



Brief Description

Students track poll results before Election Day.

Objectives

Students track the ever-changing polls during the weeks leading up to Election Day. They compare polls from week to week to see how the results of different polls change.

Keywords

poll, election, campaign, graph, president

Materials Needed

  • computers with Internet access or other resources with presidential polls, graphing supplies

Lesson Plan

Challenge students to track what polls are saying about the election. (Groups of students might track different poll sources.) Ask students to share new results from their sources on a weekly basis. Encourage students to use graphs or pie charts to help their classmates see and understand the poll numbers. Challenge students to write a weekly summary throughout the campaign that highlights similarities and differences in poll findings. You could also take a weekly poll of your students, and have them create graphs to show how classmates' choices change from week to week.

Poll Resources on the Web

Assessment

Assess students on the quality of their comparisons.

Lesson Plan Source

Education World

Submitted By

Lois Lewis

National Standards

Social Sciences:
NSS-C.5-8.1
NSS-C.5-8.5
NSS-C.9-12.1
NSS-C.9-12.5

Mathematics:
NM.5-8.10
NM.9-12.10


Updated 6/20/2011