It’s almost over, friends! The crazy, mudslinging, snarky campaign season that has seemingly gone on FOREVER is nearly at an end! Hooray! On this Election Day Eve, I’m sharing my Election Day activity!
It’s safe to say that this campaign season has not been “normal,” so to speak. While candidates seem to take digs at each other and have created negative campaign ads in previous elections, the name-calling and ridicule from both sides of the campaign is, at least in my opinion, unprecedented. It seems as though very little time, effort and funding is being spent on sharing plans and policies that will positively impact our nation! Frustrating!
In the hopes of introducing my students to some of the candidates’ actual plans, as opposed to their colorful nicknames for each other, I created a Padlet wall on which my students will list the policies of each candidate on two issues of their choice. (The most popular issues will, undoubtedly, be gun control and immigration!) Students will work in groups and will create a post to compare the candidates’ plans on each issue. They will look at the candidates’ websites for this information and will not rely on any news/media sources! Hopefully, this will allow them to learn the candidates’ positions on each issue…hopefully.
When students have finished their part of this activity, they will complete the iSideWith presidential election quiz. One of my favorite features of the iSideWith quiz is that participants can choose to answer more questions on specific issues that interest them and can also rate the importance of each issue. I also love how the results provide many potential “matches” and appropriate percentages … it’s great for students to know they are not 100% in favor of one candidate and have 0% in common with another!
After completing the iSideWith quiz, students will make their predictions about the results of Election Day by completing a quick Google Form. Students will predict the winner of the popular vote and will also take a guess at how many Electoral votes each candidate will receive. To give them a quick refresher about how the Electoral College system in America works, they will watch this video that I included in the Form … the ability to include a video … such an awesome Google Form feature!
To make the Google Form data easier to read at a glance, I used conditional formatting to highlight student answers … the cell turns blue if they select Hillary Clinton and red if they select Donald Trump. I am SOOOO glad I learned how to use conditional formatting! It’s a Google Forms game-changer.
What are your Election Day lesson ideas?
Check back later this week to read about how I’m covering election results in my classes!
Thanks for reading 🙂
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