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Brief Description In these role-plays, students act as elected officials who must vote on five bills that relate to special interests of groups that financed their campaigns. How will they vote?Objectives Students will
Keywords vote, campaign, election, law, bill, legislation, representative, senator, governor, contribution, citizenship, government, civics Interest Groups: How Would a Legislator Vote? student work sheetLesson Plan In this role-play activity from SocialStudies.com, students act as elected legislators who have accepted significant campaign contributions from a list of companies and special-interest groups. Fourteen of those special interests and their contribution amounts are listed at the start of the activity. The student-legislators must react to five scenarios in which bills have been proposed; all of those bills relate directly to the special interests that supported their campaign. How will student/legislators respond to each bill? How do they justify their responses? This activity puts kids in the place of politicians who must often make these kinds of decisions -- and who are often criticized for the decisions they make. How do they react when the shoe is on the other foot and they must justify their decisions about a bill? Do they go with their conscience? with the prevailing sentiment among their constituents? with the special interests who helped them get elected? For the complete lesson see the student work sheet, Interest Groups: How Would a Legislator Vote? on the SocialStudies.com Web site. Assessment The teacher will monitor the discussion/debate over each of the questions. Students will write a brief essay to describe what lessons they learned from this role-play activity. Lesson Plan Source National Standards FINE ARTS: Theatre NA-T.5-8.2
NA-T.9-12.1
NL-ENG.K-12.3NL-ENG.K-12.4NL-ENG.K-12.5NL-ENG.K-12.11NL-ENG.K-12.12
Communication Skills Communication Strategies Participating in Society Applying Language Skills NSS-C.5-8.1NSS-C.5-8.2NSS-C.5-8.3
Foundations of the American Political System Principles of Democracy NSS-C.9-12.1NSS-C.9-12.2NSS-C.9-12.3
Foundations of the Political System Principles of Democracy
See more election lesson plans from the Education World archive.
Originally published 10/18/2002
Last updated 08/19/2010 |