Return to Make Classroom Connections to This Year’s Elections Return to Election 2006 Lesson Plans

Subjects Arts & Humanities Language Arts Social Studies Civics Economics Government Grades 3-5 6-8 9-12 Advanced

Brief Description In these role-plays, students act as elected officials who must vote on five bills that relate to special interests of groups that financed their campaigns. How will they vote? Objectives Students will act as elected officials who must make decisions that will make someone unhappy. consider five bills that are up for vote in light of the contributions that many special-interest groups made to their campaigns. justify their vote on each bill. write a brief essay in which they share what they learned from doing this role-play activity. Keywords vote, campaign, election, law, bill, legislation, representative, senator, governor, contribution, citizenship, government, civics Materials Needed Interest Groups: How Would a Legislator Vote? student work sheet Lesson Plan In this role-play activity from SocialStudies.com, students act as elected legislators who have accepted significant campaign contributions from a list of companies and special-interest groups. Fourteen of those special interests and their contribution amounts are listed at the start of the activity. The student-legislators must react to five scenarios in which bills have been proposed; all of those bills relate directly to the special interests that supported their campaign. How will student/legislators respond to each bill? How do they justify their responses? This activity puts kids in the place of politicians who must often make these kinds of decisions -- and who are often criticized for the decisions they make. How do they react when the shoe is on the other foot and they must justify their decisions about a bill? Do they go with their conscience? with the prevailing sentiment among their constituents? with the special interests who helped them get elected? For the complete lesson see the student work sheet, Interest Groups: How Would a Legislator Vote? on the SocialStudies.com Web site. Assessment The teacher will monitor the discussion/debate over each of the questions. Students will write a brief essay to describe what lessons they learned from this role-play activity. Lesson Plan Source Social Studies School Service National Standards FINE ARTS: Theatre GRADES 5 - 8 NA-T.5-8.2 Acting By Assuming Roles and Interacting In Improvisations GRADES 9 - 12 NA-T.9-12.1 Script Writing by Planning and Recording Improvisations Based on Personal Experience and Heritage, Imagination, Literature, and History LANGUAGE ARTS: English GRADES K - 12 NL-ENG.K-12.3 Evaluation Strategies NL-ENG.K-12.4 Communication Skills NL-ENG.K-12.5 Communication Strategies NL-ENG.K-12.11 Participating in Society NL-ENG.K-12.12 Applying Language Skills SOCIAL SCIENCES: Civics GRADES 5 - 8 NSS-C.5-8.1 Civic Life, Politics, and Government NSS-C.5-8.2 Foundations of the American Political System NSS-C.5-8.3 Principles of Democracy GRADES 9 - 12 NSS-C.9-12.1 Civic Life, Politics, and Government NSS-C.9-12.2 Foundations of the Political System NSS-C.9-12.3 Principles of Democracy See more election lesson plans from the Education World archive. Click to return to this week’s Lesson Planning article, Classroom Lessons from Ed World’s Election Collection. Originally published 10/18/2002 Links last updated 10/04/2006