Informed Voting Lesson Plan: Let’s Vote For Our President

Lesson Procedure:

1. Day One: Have students walk around your decorated classroom and encourage them to ask questions about the signs, pictures, and directions they see. Explain that they will be learning about rights and responsibilities of citizens.
2. Proceed to play the BrainPOP Jr. movie Rights and Responsibilities. Pause the movie (when pause button blinks red) to clarify or check for understanding of concepts.
3. After viewing the movie, use the Talk About It feature to discuss the questions "What rights do you have? What responsibilities do you have?" Model by typing into the web page or list on the board the rights and responsibilities of a good citizen that the students mention.
4. Have students review the Word Play to get acquainted with vocabulary words: right, responsibility, law, citizen, common good.
5. Ask students to go to Draw About It and draw "What can you do to make your community better?" Have them print out their drawings. Help students as needed.
6. Distribute squares from the Responsibility Squares activity (one square per child.) Have students write their names and the responsibility they drew about on the previous section Draw About It. If you like, make a quilt out of the "responsibilities" your students drew, or display their drawings and descriptions in any fashion you want.
7. Close Day 1 lesson by summarizing all the concepts learned.
8. Day Two: Explain to students that today they will be dramatizing "Voting for Our President." Give a brief review of what you did in the previous lesson. Remind your students that voting for our new president and his/her cabinet is our right and responsibility.
9. Write new vocabulary on the board: candidate, vote, president, vice-president, Democratic Party, Republican Party, elections. Read these words with the students and briefly explain their meanings. As the lesson progresses, you can stop and explain with more details what they mean so that the students will better understand the definitions.
10. Divide students into pairs and distribute various newspaper and magazine pictures of the current presidential election candidates.
11. Have the students look at the pictures, describe who and what they see, and read the captions. Help students whenever necessary.
12. Ask students to select a speaker in their group in order to tell about their pictures.
13. Make a chart on the board - "Democratic Party - Republican Party." Write down the names of the candidates on their respective section of the chart as the students mention their names. Briefly explain what the parties mean.
14. After each group talks about their pictures, help students summarize the information of that group by writing it under the Democratic party or the Republican Party chart.
15. After all the groups present their findings, have students individually consider which candidate they consider best for President of the United States of America.
16. Distribute the Voter's Registrations to the students. Explain that now that they know who to vote for, they will be role playing the election of the USA President. Explain that the voter's registration gives them the right to vote and identifies them as US citizens with all the rights and responsibilities.
17. Have the students make a line and proceed to vote. Assign some students or ask for volunteers to verify the voter's registration and give out the ballots to vote. Later, these students will also vote.
18. Have a student count and tally the presidential votes in front of the class. Emphasize the importance of being truthful when counting the votes.
19. Announce which candidate is the winner.
20. Close the Day 2 lesson by encouraging students to use vocabulary words to tell what the class did on their election day.