Once again this year, I had the good fortune of having an election take place during my Civics course. The wonderfully smart and talented people at Student Vote make engaging students easy through their excellent resources around elections in Canada, so I decided to take advantage of this amazing program again this year.
Students were organized into groups – campaign teams for each political party, a media team, and an elections team. They worked collaboratively using Google docs (so that I could monitor to ensure equal participation by group members), researching the party platforms, specific issues, or electoral process. Each group then developed a campaign plan to promote their party’s platform. They received verbal and written feedback on short formative writing assignments, which focused on strategic voting, polling, and debates. Lessons were also built in on topics such as bias in the media.
To evaluate student’s learning on electoral issues in Canada, students were asked to create one of the following four products:
- Facebook: Write a Facebook Note that will convince your friends and family why they need to get out there and vote, or why or why not they should vote for a specific candidate
- Letter to the Editor: After reading the exemplar, choose one of the letters included below and respond to it, either in support or in opposition. You should take a stance about the importance of elections in a democratic society.
- Infographic: Create your own infographic that displays information about voter turnout during past elections. Compile this information into an infographic and an accompanying 1 paragraph explanation about why voter turnout is an important issue to address.
- Video: Create a video that is designed to go viral and convince young Canadians that they need to vote. Emphasize the importance of exercising our democratic rights and responsibilities. Write a 1 paragraph explanation of your video.