Activities
Creating and Examining Primary Documents
I will have the students become a part of the process by creating their own primary documents. The students will create their own Declaration of Independence; the students will be a little more passionate about creating their own because I will have handed out the "New," yet fake list of school rules and policies, which are extremely demanding and ridiculous. I will use these rules as fuel to have the students wanting to declare independence from the principle. The students will be put into groups of 3-5 to create their documents which will have guidelines on how to structure their document (the assignment will model the structure Declaration of Independence, so when it is time to learn the different parts of this document the students will already be familiar). After the groups have created their Declarations they will have to present their documents to the class and try to petition the other groups to sign. This strategy is an attempt at making the students more comfortable with the document when it is time to learn the actual Declaration of Independence. This strategy should also help the students remember the different sections of the document because of their vested interest in their own document.
Viewing Political Cartoons
The students are mandated by the state to have the skills to analyze political cartoons, so for one of the activities I will teach the students how to interpret political cartoons. I will start the students off with some of the first presidential political cartoons from the 1826 election. I will employ a graphic organizer to help break down the cartoon. The graphic organizer has the acronym S.P.A.M, The S stands for Symbol; the graphic organizer asks the student "what symbols appear in the picture?" The P stands for People; asking the student "who are the people in the picture?" The A is for Action; "what action is occurring in the picture?" Lastly the M is Message; "what message is being conveyed by the picture"?
For this activity we will do the first couple political campaign cartoons as a class; so the students will get a feel of how to use the graphic organizer. Once they get an understanding of how to use the graphic organizer, the students will pair up and do two on their own and then compare their notes. After this activity the students will hopefully remember the acronym and employ this on the once daunting political cartoons.
Who do you think won?
I will use two separate classes to test who they believe won the historic 1960 Nixon v. Kennedy presidential debate. Class 1 will: listen to the audio recording of the first televised debate and record notes on who they think won with a score card at the end. After scoring the debate I will poll the class to determine who they believe won the debate. The second class will view the televised version of the debate and receive the same score card on the different categories. I will have the class total their score cards and I will poll the class to see whom they believe won. Once the results are in I will display who the other class believed won the debate. My goal is for the classes to pick two different winners. If there are two separate winners I will be able to drive home the idea that the way you receive your media can affect how you perceive information. I will then show a few different first hand sources that review how the debate turned out.
Lights, Camera, Campaign
Many of my students are showmen/women, and they love portraying their talents whatever they maybe. After learning and viewing campaign messages, commercials, debates, flyers, and cartoons the students will be put to the task of creating their own. The students will be required to create some form of campaign propaganda using the examples viewed in class as models. This assignment will be fairly liberal in what the students choose to create but I will assist in creating a rubric on what they will be graded on. My goal here is for the students to be creative and help them have more connection with what campaigning really is.
Debate or Discussion: that is the question
When it comes to having opinions, my students have them, lots of them. But when it comes to being able to argue or discuss their feelings or beliefs they often do not know how to effectively do so. This activity is a fun way of getting students involved in discussions and debating. This activity even gets the often quiet kids involved, which is great. The activity is called inner and outer circle debating. The desks have to be arranged in two even circles, one inner and one outer (hence the name). The students will be given two articles on any hot button media issues (as the teacher, use your discretion on the difficulty of the articles). You will position the students in either the inner or outer circles first and after the first article they switch (try to make sure you mix up the talkative students with the not so talkative or else one group will be painfully quiet). For each article give the students an allotted amount of time, in order to let the students read and take notes on what they agree with in the article and what they do not agree with. Before beginning the debate you are to issue an index card to each member of the outer circle assigning them a job to do during the first debate. These jobs can be something serious or something fun; I typically like to assign funny jobs. Examples include, the student is to write down how many times boys talk opposed to girls, a time keeper, a student to record who they think was not paying attention. You can make up whatever jobs you would like as long as you keep them on task while inner circle is debating. Once switch groups and group one finishes, switch groups and reassign outer circle jobs, and repeat the process. Once both groups have finished have students lead a discussion on the findings and outcomes of the activity. The first time you try and implement this activity it may take a while for the students to start debating but try and let it happen naturally.
That's a fact…or is it?
This activity will force the students to start thinking about whether or not something that was said is a fact or is an opinion. The students will be placed into groups of 4-5 and will listen to or watch numerous campaign messages from past and present elections. For each one of the messages I will provide them with one statement to pay close attention to. Once the message is finished, the student amongst their groups will be asked to come up with whether or not the statement that I picked out was a fact or an opinion. The students will have to defend their ideas against an opposing group view point. If the choice of fact or opinion is unanimous amongst the class and is correct, move on to the next message. If its unanimous and wrong, choose a group to come up to debate with you why they believe they are correct. This activity is good for two reasons: 1. it allows for students to learn how to tell the difference between fact and opinion, and 2. it makes the students defend their ideas.
Walk the Plank
This activity is good to see what political party the students have more in common with. I call this walk the plank because you can find how a party stands on an issue in their party platform, I have the students imagine that the platform is made of wood and each "plank" of wood is an issue. During this activity the classroom desk are pushed away and the room has two large pieces of tape in the middle about two feet apart separating the room in half. The class before this the student will receive a list of about 10 issues that can be found in two major parties platforms, they will be asked to write why they agree, disagree or are in between on the either liberal or conservative stance that I picked for each issue.
I will instruct the student on how this activity will go, if they agree with the issue and it's a liberal stance (they will know if it's liberal or conservative) they go to the left and if they disagree they go to the right. After I finish reading the issue the students pick the sides of the tape, I will ask 3-4 students each time why they chose their side, if a student is in the middle they will have to explain why first. After the middle heard both viewpoints they can pick a side or explain why they stayed in the middle.
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