Presidential Election 2000

Brief Description

As a class, students examine the presidential candidates and their election platforms. Some students may be eligible to vote within a few years. The activities will help them learn to ask the kinds of questions that result in making informed choices.

Objectives

The primary purpose of the lesson is to give students experience as they prepare for the time when they will have the privilege of voting.

Key Concepts

presidential candidates, platform, poll, mock election, campaign, citizenship

Materials Needed

• materials for projects: poster board, ribbons, PowerPoint directions (optional), scrapbooks, etc.
• guidelines for crediting references from the Modern Language Association
• Useful election sites:
  
  • Politics Watch 2000
    
  • The PBS Democracy Project

Lesson Plan

• As a class, students examine the presidential candidates and explore their platforms.
• Students compare the candidates' platforms and create a chart to use to make decisions.
• Using the chart of candidate platforms as criteria, each student chooses the candidate who most represents his or her beliefs and values.
• Students collect information, pictures, speeches, and paraphernalia about their candidates.
• Students showcase their candidates in scrapbooks, bulletin board displays, slideshows, PowerPoint presentations, cardboard-framed portraits, or other creative displays.
• Each student writes a 1,000-word persuasive essay explaining why fellow students should vote for his or her candidate. The essays follow Modern Language Association (MLA) style for giving credit to sources used.

Additional Activities

• Students who choose the same candidate work together to create campaign materials that include any combination of the following -- flyers, brief commercials to be shown over school televisions, hall displays, buttons or ribbons to be worn by students, posters, PowerPoint presentations to be shown to other classes, speeches, articles for school and town newspapers.
• Students work together to poll their classmates about which candidate they would vote for; students report their findings to the school.
• Students work together to set up and hold a mock election, preferably on Election Day, Tuesday, November 7.

Assessment

Teacher-Suggested Assessment

• "A" work includes participating fully, conducting activities in a manner appropriate in a school atmosphere, and showing exceptional and extraordinarily creative work.
• "B" work includes participating in most activities, behaving well while carrying out projects, and showing grade-level creativity in the work.