Cast Your Vote

Election Day!  For my students, this means NO SCHOOL, as our buildings are used as polling places.  For me, it means INSERVICE DAY, where I spent my day working with my colleagues (and had a full hour to eat lunch!  at a restaurant!  with other people!).  But I digress.  The election process is one that my students still need exposure to and help wading through, especially in a presidential election year, so I planned to teach my lesson on the day before...and hope they could learn something to go home and maybe teach their someone else a thing or two.

I found a really fantastic lesson on the election process/electoral college on the blog One Hoosier Teacher.  Check it out here.  I found it a long time ago and saved it (thanks, Pinterest), knowing I'd need a great lesson for the first Tuesday in November.  I pretty much mimicked her whole lesson since it was perfect, but I did adapt a couple of things for my class.

As I began the lesson on the electoral college, I reminded my class that the electoral college is NOT a place of higher education, not a place to where they can earn a football scholarship, and certainly not a place with dorm rooms & fraternity parties :)

It's a confusing process, this electoral college, and it's one that I'd venture to say many adults don't totally understand.  I used the book Grace for President as my read aloud for the day.  The book does a decent job of explaining the electoral college in a humorous manner.

Then we viewed this infographic.  It helped the kids to see the process on the screen and actually be able to follow it.  When I felt like we had a pretty good working knowledge of the process, we moved on to their own voting process.

I have 20 students in my morning class, and 18 in my afternoon class.  In order to reach our quota of 51 (50 states plus Washington, DC), I also asked other teachers and staff members to vote in our election.  Then I gave each student a slip of paper with his or her own state on it, and gave them a minute to find their state on the map & find their number of electoral college votes.  Some kids complained about their low number, but that made me feel like they really did understand the process.

After they established their numbers, I dangled the carrot.  I told the students they'd be voting...not for Romney or Obama, but for Coke or Pepsi.  They had a minute or two to decide which soda they wanted to vote for, then I opened the polls.  They brought their state slips to the table, deposited them in the ballot box, and chose their soda.

Then we voted on the site 270towin.  My class really liked this part, and waited with anticipation to see whether the state would turn red (Coke) or blue (Pepsi).

In the end, it was a landslide.  Coke won, 323 to 209.  For those of you counting, no, that doesn't add up to 538.  I had one student who opted out of voting, claiming she didn't like Coke or Pepsi (can you imagine?!).  I used it as a semi-teachable moment...pointing out that lots of times, people opt out of voting, and even though it's your civic duty, I certainly couldn't force anyone to cast a vote.  But I also pointed out that even as one person opts to not vote, the entire state of Nevada would not ever really opt out, so those 6 electoral college votes would actually be counted in a real election.

I think the kids really enjoyed the lesson, and not just because they ended up with a can of pop.  (Yes, I know I've called it both soda and pop in this post.  What can I say-I grew up in Buffalo, NY, but live in Cincinnati, OH.  I haven't fully converted to the dark side!)