Good morning students! This lesson involves pulling a lot of the work you've done as a candidate into one media product: Your web presence. Your slogan, your poster, and now your video ad will all be part of your web ad. I've given you a very simple HTML template to manage it all, which you can customize and expand according to your comfort and abilities with HTML. You'll need a place to host your poster image and a place to host your video - if this gives you trouble, I can definitely help. I would love to see some of your videos!

Here is the PDF for this week's lessons: Vote for Me! Week 5: Commercial Break

Media: Analyzing Different Types of Ads

We want our students to be able to hear or see a campaign commercial and really break it down into its components, understand the agenda behind it, and analyze the way its message is being formed. The goal here is to make wiser, more savvy voters who think critically about what they hear and see on the radio and on TV. When you’re watching television, watch the campaign ads and discuss. It’s not necessarily that important what’s right and wrong in the ads, but that the students are learning to think about *why* various decisions were made in the ad’s production and what effect the ads are having on them in ways they may not have noticed.

Film-making: Filming Your Campaign Ad

This should be fun, fun, fun! If the child ends up reading the speech instead of looking into the camera, fine! If they end up having a finished product that doesn’t live up to their expectations, just laugh, congratulate them on their first attempt, and move on. It’s all about the process — all the little decisions and plans and putting it all together. They’re putting themselves in the candidates’ shoes to see what it feels like to try and sell yourself to people you don’t know who will be judging you on all kinds of things like your hair and the photos on your desk.

History: Famous Political Ads Throughout TV History (Online)

Thinking: Spin Worksheet

The purpose of this worksheet is to encourage critical thinking, to help the students to see how a fact can be skewed in different directions, and to again lead them to be more savvy as they absorb messages in the media. While the facts they’ll be spinning aren’t necessarily political, they’re good practice. When you hear or see examples of spin in the media, you might want to point them out. They might also benefit from exposure to a “Crossfire” type show on television.

Computer Science: HTML Template for Online Ad

Here’s a bit of code for developing your online ads, if you’d like to do that.

Individual PDFs to download, in case you don't want the whole lesson:

Analyzing the Ads

Filming Your Campaign Ad

Spin Worksheet

HTML Template


Previous lessons:

Week 4: A Poster You Can Believe In
Week 3: The Platform and the Stump
Week 2: Unconventional Conventions
Week 1: Let's Get This Party Started
Prelude Class: What's an Election?

Download the whole unit so far: Vote for Me

Labels: elections, lessons, social studies, unit study, voteforme

Hi future politicians of this fine country! Is it just me or are you noticing the road sides covered with signs promoting the different candidates? Some of them just have the candidates' names, but some have slogans like "Peace, Prosperity, and Reform!" or "Yes We Can!". As we get closer and closer to Election Day, we will be seeing more and more of these posters, along with other graphics like t-shirts, bumper stickers, and campaign literature in our doorways, and we will be hearing slogans louder and louder. This week is about figuring out how these posters and slogans are made by making our own. As we notice what's happening around us, we'll be learning to analyze the messages we're receiving, and make sense of some of the visuals we encounter.

Here is the PDF for this week's lessons: Vote for Me! Week 4: A Poster You can Believe In

Graphic Design: Elements of a Good Poster
Here we examine campaign posters from various candidates to try and find the common elements and decide what makes a good poster. It is a great time to notice posters on the road side and compare and contrast the different decisions made by these various designers. Which ones can you read best? Which one on each corner draws your eye most effectively? If there’s any way you can get your hands on a wide variety of campaign material for them to examine and compare, that would really help.

Photography: Choosing a Good Image
This exercise will be lots of fun. The ultimate purpose is to have the students feel the pressure of expressing themselves through a facial expression, and understand better what the “real” candidates are going through as they pose for pictures. While it may seem superficial, a lot of time is spent on the candidate’s choices in wardrobe and hair and even the way they smile. The students will come away from this lesson with a better grasp of that.

Thinking: How Much Can You Remember?
This game demonstrates the need for slogans to be short in order to be memorable. However, the bonus section, where the students write their own gradually inflated slogans, can turn into a nice little grammar exercise too. Use all the opportunities when you see political slogans on TV or on posters around town to discuss how memorable they are, how effective they are, and what candidates they’re promoting.

Social Studies: Slogans Past and Present
Here’s a research exercise for the students, and an opportunity to develop their own slogans for their own campaigns. Whatever they come up with is great, though they should start being aware of how the slogans work as chants, how they look on a poster, whether they rhyme, and other rhetorical considerations. Again, finding real examples to look at will help.

Song: Tippecanoe and Tyler Too

Individual PDFs to download, in case you don't want the whole lesson:

Elements of a Good Poster

What Makes a Good Image

How Much Can You Remember?

Slogans Past and Present

Song: Tippecanoe and Tyler Too

That's it! A lot to digest. Some pretty heavy thinking and writing going on, but keep it personal, keep it meaningful, and have fun with it!

Previous lessons:
Week 3: The Platform and the Stump
Week 2: Unconventional Conventions
Week 1: Let's Get This Party Started
Prelude Class: What's an Election?

Labels: elections, lessons, social studies, unit study, voteforme

Introducing the Complete Book of Presidents and States. I bought this book at Sam's Club when I was collecting materials to inform my elections unit production, because of the cool set of cards in the beginning of the book -- pictures of the presidents on the front and facts/trivia on the back, along with different game ideas for learning the names and order. That seemed like a great selling point, and it is. However, I've found that we're using this book a lot, and it has benefits beyond the deck of cards in the front. For example, there is *another* set of cards in the middle! Who knew?

After that first section, there is a page for every President, with a summary of their lives and the major events that happened during their presidencies.

1. Used as reading comprehension practice, it delivers short non-fiction pieces and varied, interesting little recall exercises like crosswords, fill-ins, and other puzzles. Not a lot of "why" questions but it is good practice for remembering facts and also locating facts within blocks of text.

2. I don't expect Benny to really absorb and remember which President bought Arizona or who was a Whig or whatever. But the information does give him a context in which to think of the current President and the candidates. Some were disliked, some were liked. Some only were President for a few weeks or months. It's definitely educational for *me* in the same way -- looking at the whole string of Presidents in a row takes a little significance away from any single one. It also gives you a sense that the country has really changed. I mean, obviously, right? But still, looking at the people and faces and the crises they faced, you really get that the country itself, the entity of the USA has morphed and changed in significant ways. Of course you can provide the "why" questions that the book does not.

3. Another cool thing about the book is that at the end of each one-page lesson there is an extension question for which the student has to do a bit of research. I've decided that Wikipedia is safe enough, or at least that the only danger comes from overly political pages on community organizing and not from X-rated pop-ups. So, Benny's been learning to search for things like what they used to call the White House, or whose father was a Congressman from what state. More exercise in scanning text for information, and also it's very satisfying to find the answer with research.

4. But wait, there's more. After the Presidents section there's a states section! Every state commands two or three pages of info and then cute little tests on that info. Of course you'll learn about the state bird (what an immortal waste of time state birds are, yo) and the capitol, but you'll also learn other things that are actually interesting and will lead you to discussions.

So, ding dong we hurry along. Benny knows the President song and the Electoral College song, so this week we're going to add another song:

James T. Polk by They Might Be Giants.



You can hear it in this movie from YouTube, accompanied by a video that someone made for a history class, which I find quite good. I have to write down the guitar chords, but here are the lyrics:

In 1844, the Democrats were split
The three nominees for the presidential candidate
Were Martin Van Buren, a former president and an abolitionist
James Buchanan, a moderate
Louis Cass, a general and expansionist
From Nashville came a dark horse riding up
He was James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump

Austere, severe, he held few people dear
His oratory filled his foes with fear
The factions soon agreed
He's just the man we need
To bring about victory
Fulfill our manifest destiny
And annex the land the Mexicans command
And when the votes were cast the winner was
Mister James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump

In four short years he met his every goal
He seized the whole southwest from Mexico
Made sure the tarriffs fell
And made the English sell the Oregon territory
He built an independent treasury
Having done all this he sought no second term
But precious few have mourned the passing of
Mister James K. Polk, our eleventh president
Young Hickory, Napoleon of the Stump

I bought this book for $5.88 and it is listed on this web site for $14.95, so keep that in mind.

Labels: book reviews, voteforme

Hello candidates! Welcome to your campaign! Isn't this exciting? We have a little over fifty days left until the election, and things are rocking and rolling on the national scene. Now that we've had our conventions, it's time to hit the campaign trail. This week we'll be developing our platforms, polishing our stump speeches, and planning a five city tour of the country. If you live in an area where you can get out to see the "real" candidates doing their thing at a rally, that would be very cool! We've seen Barack Obama once, and yesterday we meet a candidate for Senate, former Virginia Governor Mark Warner. We hope to see Sarah Palin on September 18th too. I would love to have the kids see all the main candidates in person, so we'll see how that works out! I will tell you that it's worth the effort to get out and experience some of this stuff first hand -- they learn a lot just from what they absorb in the situation, and it's way easier to show them than to tell them. Have fun!

Here is the PDF for this week's lessons: Vote for Me! Week 3: The Platform and the Stump


Thinking: Building a Platform
It’s important here to accept and encourage any issues and ideas that are truly interesting and important to your student. My guess is that they will not come up with health care and foreign policy planks in their platforms. It’s important that they care about their own issues so that they can make good stump speeches.

Writing: Writing a Stump Speech
The stump speech is a very basic five paragraph essay. I don’t believe in teaching a five paragraph essay in which the first and last paragraphs are a summary of the middle three. The introduction should truly be an introduction, not just a preview. The conclusion should truly be a conclusion, not a recap. There are added considerations when writing a speech, such as writing a great opener and a great closer. The best way for students to intuitively understand how to do this is to listen to and read some great speeches, readily available online.

Public Speaking: Delivering Your Stump Speech
The students will create before/after videos (or just do before/after performances for a very local audience) and in between they’ll learn some rudimentary principles of public speaking. Remember to lead by example — exaggerate your dynamics, your gestures, and don’t be afraid to be silly in order to break the ice for shy speakers.

Social Studies: Out on the Stump
This activity could be as involved as you want it to be. You could stop with considering a great choice of five cities to visit, finding them on a map and leaving it there, or you could get as detailed as per diem food allowances and finding places to entertain VIP donors. Go wild!

Thinking: Campaign Promises
This is hard to do without bias, especially when it comes to giving examples. Use whatever you believe in your own family to illustrate this lesson. What I want the students to take away is the struggle each candidate faces between being realistic and honest and pleasing people. Whatever our politics, that dilemma is universal.

Individual PDFs to download, in case you don't want the whole lesson:

Building a Platform Worksheet

Writing a Stump Speech

Delivering a Stump Speech

Out on the Stump: Planning a Campaign Trip

Campaign Promises

That's it! A lot to digest. Some pretty heavy thinking and writing going on, but keep it personal, keep it meaningful, and have fun with it!

Previous lessons:
Week 2: Unconventional Conventions
Week 1: Let's Get This Party Started
Prelude Class: What's an Election?

OR you can download the entire thing so far here: Vote for Me!

Labels: elections, lessons, social studies, unit study, voteforme

Hello again! This lesson is about interpreting the videos created by the political parties to promote their candidates. I thought the videos used to introduce Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were particularly interesting in a compare-and-contrast way, and having had this conversation with my eight-year-old, I can tell you that he had observations that went beyond what I had already thought I was going to use in the lesson. So, here is the discussion. Some of these questions will again become relevant when we create our own campaign commercials:

Promoting the Candidate: The Biographical Video

Watch these videos first.

Barack Obama Intro:



Hillary Clinton Intro:



Discussion Questions:

Immediately after watching the Clinton video: List three things you remember seeing in the video.

Immediately after watching the Obama video: List three things you remember seeing in the video.

How would you describe the music in the Barack Obama video?

How would you describe the music in the Hillary Clinton video?

Barack Obama is the nominee for President from the Democratic Party. What is the purpose of this video? What were the people who made the video trying to accomplish by making it?

Hillary Clinton almost won the nomination instead of Barack Obama. Many of her supporters were really angry and were there at the convention. What do you think the purpose of this video was? What were its creators trying to accomplish?

The Clinton video had clips from comedy TV shows. It pointed out that she is a bad singer and has a funny laugh. Do you recall seeing any laughing in the Obama video?

Why might the Clinton video be more upbeat and funny, and the Obama video be more serious?

What are three moments from your life that you would want to include in a biographical video about you?

What are three songs you’d like to include?

Link to the PDF for this lesson: Interpreting the Promotional Videos

Link to the updated Week 2 set: Unconventional Conventions

Labels: voteforme

Hello budding politicos! Are we having fun with these conventions or what? I am almost ready to say my favorite thing about them is watching for the most awesome hats. Today I have two more short lessons for you about the conventions. I'm actually going to post these as online lessons, also as PDFs, and I'm also going to repost the link to the Week 2 lesson plan with these included. While they can be viewed online and discussed in the context of online images, it's also important to print the PDFs so that you can cut them up, move them around, and mix them in with the kids' own drawings.



This is another tough week in terms of handling issues of race and gender. It's hard to present the historical importance of having a black candidate and a female candidate without presenting some difficult information on discrimination and oppression. For our family, we've decided to just present the facts, and let the enormous significance come later. I know that Benny is not going to realize how important these groundbreaking moments are, even if I try to persuade him with examples and info. Maybe I don't truly grasp it well enough either. All I can do is let him know the facts and recognize that the real understanding may come much later.



BALANCING THE TICKET DISCUSSION

Look at the pictures on the previous page. Using the pictures and what you know about these candidates from watching the conventions, think about these questions:

1. List three things that are the same and three things that are different about John McCain and Sarah Palin. Think about physical appearance, identity, experience, geographic location, and personality.
2. List three things that are the same and three things that are different about Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Think about physical appearance, identity, experience, geographic location, and personality.
3. Do you think it’s more important to find a running mate who agrees with your ideas or a running mate who balances your ticket?
4. Do you think that appearance is important when choosing a running mate?
5. Try cutting out the pictures on the previous page and rearranging them. Mix and match. How would the tickets change if John McCain were with Joe Biden and Barack Obama were with Sarah Palin?
6. What would you think of a ticket with two women (like the Green party has) or a ticket with two men (like the Democrats)?
7. Sarah Palin is the first Republican woman to be on a presidential ticket. Why do you think John McCain chose her?
8. Draw pictures of yourself and your invented running mate. Mix and match yourself in with the candidate pictures you cut out on page 1. (You need the printed PDF for this.)

Link to the PDF for this lesson: Balancing the Ticket

Link to the updated Week 2 set: Unconventional Conventions

Labels: voteforme

Hello class members! Welcome to week 2 of our campaign! This week we are going to be learning the ins and outs of an introduction speech, the significance of the "running mate," and we're also going to be listening to and yelling political speeches and documenting our physical respones to these experiences. Getting through this material before the conventions get underway will help us understand what we're looking at when we watch the speeches on TV.

Here are some links that may be helpful as we contextualize the speeches and rituals at the conventions:

Famous Political Speeches, with text and audio.
Speeches from the Democratic National Convention, 2004.
Speeches from the Republican National Convention, 2004.

Here is the PDF for this week's lessons: Vote for Me! Week 2: Unconventional Conventions


Now that we’ve created our political parties, it’s time to throw a party. This week we’re getting ready to watch the real conventions on TV, so our purpose is to learn the vocabulary, become familiar with the different types of speeches, so that we will understand what we’re watching.

Read-Along Teach-Along Sheet: Political Conventions
There is a lot of information to pack in here and I glossed over some of the details of the nominating process in the interest of not overloading the students. When they watch the convention on TV and see each state’s delegation casting their votes, it will become more clear.

Writing and Reading: The “A Man Who” Speech
Beginning readers may not be able to wade through all of the two introductory speeches I linked to. If you are reading them aloud to your students, make sure to do it with high drama. After the students’ own introductions are written, have them practice introducing each other as well as being introduced. I purposefully made the format very short so that multiple ones could be written. Write an introductory speech for the dog. Write an introductory speech for Jack and Annie. Etc.

Science and Reading: The Physical Effects of Political Rhetoric
Here’s a miniature science project. This will be more interesting if the student delivers the speech at top volume with many gestures. Also, make sure the clapping and cheering during the listening segment is very enthusiastic and possibly even aerobic. Make sure you check your pulse and breathing rate when you're watching the keynote address in each convention. Who gets your pulse rate up higher?

Thinking Activity: Choosing a Running Mate
I had originally planned for siblings to be each other’s running mates, but I think now that it’s better if the students invent someone to fit the ticket. If your student has someone in mind that exists in real life, that would be cool too.

Art: How to Make a Duct Tape Hat
Make a tough, colorful, waterproof hat out of two rolls of duct tape! Wear it to watch the speeches on TV! This lesson is available online with how-to illustrations in the post previous to this one, or follow the link in the header.

Multimedia Assignment:
Watch the Conventions on TV!

Individual PDFs to download, in case you don't want the whole lesson:

Readalong Teachalong: Political Conventions

Writing and Reading: The "A Man Who" Speech

Science: The Physical Effects of Political Rhetoric: What a Feeling!

Thinking Activity: Choosing a Running Mate

Benny continues to blog his assignments. I'd love to hear from you and see how you're doing. Have a great week! To see all the lessons in this unit click here.

Labels: elections, lessons, social studies, unit study, voteforme

Want to learn to make an awesome, waterproof, colorful, duct tape hat, using two rolls of duct tape and nothing else!? Welcome! This project is part of the Vote for Me! Elections Unit Study hosted here at Little Blue School. All the lucky people who are attending the political conventions are going to be wearing those crazy, ridiculous, fashionable hats, so I decided to get us in the mood with duct tape hats. My dear friend Lori, adored playmate of my childhood, brought her kids over today to play. They are also homeschoolers! Naturally, I roped them into some hatmaking, particularly Eden, who is 11 and handy with the duct tape.

Here's our result:



So, how did we get there?

Materials:
Duct tape in many colors. We used Duck brand which comes in purple, orange, blue, red, chrome, pink, aqua, yellow, and other silly choices. I used approximately two rolls per hat. Some rolls have more on them than others. I had no problem getting a whole hat out of two small rolls, with leftovers.
Scissors you don't care too much about. They will get sticky.

I can think of a million variations to this hat, but here are directions for my hat, my method:

1. Build the Brim Square. First, you build a square from which to cut the brim.



Lay down a piece of tape, about 18 inches long, sticky side up.
Next tear off another piece of the same length. Lay it on the first piece, sticky side down, staggered halfway up.
Now you have two pieces of tape stuck together, with half the sticky side exposed on each side.
Turn the piece over to expose the sticky part of the tape you just added.
Stick another piece on, same length, sticky side down, over that one.
Continue until you have a square.

By laying each piece of tape exactly over the other, arranging these two-sided strips next to each other, and then laying another layer of tape perpendicular to the first layer, to join them, you can create a stronger piece. Like I said, there are other ways, but this was my way.

2. Cut the Head Hole. When you have built a square, cut a circle out from the middle of it.



You'll need a circle that will allow your head to go into it, but be careful of making it too loose. Duct tape is actually pretty stretchy. To get a circle, fold your square in half and then cut a quarter circle away from the center point, then unfold. If you start with a 3.25 inch quarter circle, you will probably be in the right neighborhood. Big math points to older students for figuring all this out exactly. Fit it onto your head to make sure it will go:



3. Create the Crown Rectangle. Now it's time to make the crown. Figure out how high you want your hat to be. I did about 12 inch strips. Your vertical strips will be joined together in exactly the same manner that you joined strips to build the brim. If you want stripes, alternate colors -- two blue (one in the front, turn, one in the back) then two red (one in the front, turn, one in the back)

Here's me making the striped crown of Sadie's pink-and-chrome hat:



4. Join the Crown Tube. When the crown has been built up to a length that will wrap around your head and fit approximately into the hole you made in your brim, finish it by joining the two ends together.

Here I am with the "stovepipe" part of the hat, measuring it against the hole in the brim, while Dan explains something about trading to me:



Here's Eden measuring her crown against her brim, checking to see if she needs to add more strips:



5. Cut the Tabs. Now cut slits in the bottom of the crown, about two inches long, all around the bottom of it. These will become tabs that attach to the brim. This is best illustrated in a picture I took of Eden making her hat:



6. Connect Brim to Crown. When you have your tabs cut, tear as many 3 inch strips of tape as you have tabs, and stick them to something closeby, like a table edge or your leg, so they'll be handy. Start by taping down one tab, then do the tab opposite, then the tabs between, and work your way around. So, do the north tab first, then the south tab, then east and west, etc. This will keep your project even. It's a good idea to try on during this process so you can gather it in or stretch it out a bit, as needed. Tape all your tabs down firmly. If at any point the hat becomes too big, create a gather and tape it down. If it is too small, cut the crown apart, add more tape, tape it back together, and you will *never know* there was a problem. Duct tape is awesome!



7. Attach the Top. The only thing left is to make the very top of the hat. If you still have the piece you cut out of the brim, you can use that to finish the top, or you can create a new piece using the same strip-on-strip method, and cut it into a circle. It's not necessary to make it perfect at first cut, you can trim it to fit later, after you tape it in. Attach it with tape strips inside the crown where it won't show:



8. Embellish. Now you can trim the brim into whatever shape you like. Zig-zag, circle, scallops, or whatever. You can cut out embellishments and tape them on, add a hat band, flowers, whatever you like. We added stars on this hat to turn it from this:



To this:



Eden rolled her brim to create a cowboy-hat-like effect:



That's it! There are more pictures in my Flickr Set but I can't resist posting a few more here. Any questions, please email me. If you do this project, I would love to see the results! Stay tuned for more Vote for Me materials, and happy campaigning!

Benny's hat:



Jordan's hat:



Cameron's hat:



Happy Homeschoolers:



Is this your first time at Little Blue School? Welcome to the blog! I hope you'll stick around and visit some of my other posts for more homeschooling ideas, projects, songs, and crafts. If you found this page helpful, would you bookmark it on your favorite social bookmarking site? Thanks!

Labels: art, duct tape hat, homeschooling, how to, projects, voteforme

Welcome to the Vote for Me! Elections Unit Study week 1, in which we begin to develop our own campaigns! Last week was great. We figured out what the President does and learned a song naming all the Presidents. We learned about the reasons voting is useful, and about majority and minority. We learned about the electoral college and sang about it. We discussed voting rights and how our country's ideas of what is right have developed and changed over time. You can see last week's lesson here if you missed it. You're welcome to join in any time!

Here is the PDF for this week, containing the entire lesson:Vote for Me! Week 1: Let's Get This Party Started!

This week the fun really begins! As our students take their first steps toward defining themselves as candidates, we’ll need to be very positive and supportive of their ideas. Guide them toward understanding the process rather than focusing on specifics they’re coming up with. I guarantee that by the time they’re 35 and ready to be President, they will not still think that donuts are an important political issue.

Read-Along Teach-Along Sheet: Political Parties
It’s very hard to define the different political parties in a succinct way that’s both accurate and easily digestible by children. You may want to polish this section to suit your own tastes. My intention is to stay very positive about every candidate, every party. There are intelligent, honest, moral people in all parties. This is not a time for us to communicate our own possibly strong political opinions in a negative way, because we don’t want the children to be negative with each other when they’re campaigning. So, as hard as it may be for you to say nice things about a party to which you do not belong, suck it up!

Thinking Activity: Defining Your Issues and Priorities
A lot of the work we do during this class will involve introspection and self-analysis. We as teachers have to work with whatever comes out. If my student wants to start a bike-riding party, I’m going to have to use that to teach the ideas I want to teach him. This can become an interesting exercise, maybe the first time some of the younger kids have really asked themselves who they are and what they believe. We are not looking for “liberty” and “democracy” among their core values. We may be looking for freedom, but it may come out in the context of freedom to stay out after dark.

Creating a Political Party
Some questions to work through on page 1, and a kind of charter document to fill out on page 2.

Group Activity
This game will work best with more than one child, but can be done with one. Introduces the concept of facts vs. opinions, and gives the kids an active, non-verbal way to take a stand on issues.

Individual PDFs to download, in case you don't want the whole lesson:

Political Parties Readalong Teachalong

Defining Issues and Priorities Thinksheet

Inventing a Political Party Worksheet

The Opinions Game: Agree or Disagree?

I love hearing from students. Benny is blogging some of his efforts at his blog. Last week I particularly enjoyed hearing an MP3 of Phillip, who is five, singing himself to sleep with the Presidents song. Of course, he seems to be listing Jackson Pollack as every other president, but... it was very inspiring to hear that, nonetheless! Keep going!

This is the first week of Vote for Me! Elections Unit Study! For all classes to date, click the link.

Labels: elections, lessons, social studies, unit study, voteforme

Labels: elections, lessons, social studies, unit study, voteforme

On August 6, 2008, I began be e-teaching a class on elections via this blog. The class took each student through developing their own presidential candidacy, including creating a campaign commercial, developing a platform, and interviewing constituents. By working on our own campaigns, we learned social studies, history, math, science, music and art lessons. Here on this site each week, there were printables to download, songs, lesson plans, project ideas, bias-free encouragement, and a guideline for taking students through this experience.

The class was designed to be tailored by you to meet your child at his or her level, so the materials are flexible and can be used for a variety of ages. If you liked my Treasure Island seminar, you'll love this class. We will sing the presidents, deconstruct slogans, study the effects of political rhetoric on heart rates of the speaker, and more! The class will culminate on Election Day, with one more lesson during January showcasing the inauguration. Here's a list of what's in store, with links to classes I have already posted:

Prelude: Election Overview
What is voting and who is the president?
Why vote? Why not just agree?
Majority and Minority: How we decide
States and the Electoral College
Voting Rights

Class #1. Let’s Get This Party Started
Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians
Inventing a political party
Defining Issues
Picking a mascot
Picking a name
Posters: Strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree.

Class #2. Unconventional Conventions
The “a man who” speech
Physical effects of listening to political rhetoric
Choosing a running mate
Duct Tape Convention Hats
Balancing the Ticket
Interpeting Promotional Media

Class #3. The Platform and the Stump
Prioritizing issues to write a platform
Campaign Promises
Creating a stump speech in 5 paragraphs
Pause for applause: Delivering the stump speech
Planning a campaign trip – map

Class #4. A Poster You Can Believe In
Choosing an Image
Icons and Imagery
Where can you put your poster?
Slogans Past and Present
How Much Can You Remember?

Class #5. Commercial Break
Choosing music, background, clothing
Types of ads: Negative, Warm/Fuzzy, Scare, Humor
Famous political ads through history of TV
Spin Worksheet
HTML Template for Campaign Site

This project is free and open to all students interested in current events. If you do use the materials, I would love to hear about it and see pictures!

Labels: election, lessons, politics, unit study, voteforme, voting