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Chris Clark
09
Project
Summary
Historical topics with greatest depth of
expertise: Progressive Era, WWII, Cold
War
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1. General Overview of the Proposed
Project:
In this project students will learn about
the topics surrounding the election. Students will complete a
series of 3 assignments for this project. The first project will be
to select two current days issues within out country that concern
them the most and write a 3 paper on what background of these
problems, why they concern the students, and what are some tentative
plans to fixing these problems. Then the student will research each
of the main two presidential candidates and write a 2nd
three page paper on how the candidates plan on dealing with each of
the two main issues they have chosen. Finally the students will
select a candidate they feel they want to support and create a one
page facts sheet on why they want that candidate to be elected. On
the day of the election we will have a live debate in class to see
how the candidates plan to address different issues.
2. Clear Purpose and Objective:
After spending the first few weeks of my
class teaching government I realized the majority of the students in
every class had no clue about the election. Some students didn’t
even know the two major party candidates by name. After realizing
how little students today know about the election and how important
some of the topics they are debating over are, I realized it was
very important to create a project that would allow students to
research the candidates for the upcoming election.
3. Stakeholders: grade level, who will
benefit, who will participate in this project.
Right now I have 3 classes of U.S. History
and Government Students. The majority of them are 11th
graders but I do have a handful of 12th graders taking
the course for a second time. All three classes will participate in
this project.
4. U.S. History Content Area
A large portion of our curriculum
revolves around government. I think this is an ideal situation to
relate what is going on in the current election to government topics
we discuss in class such as Primary’s, Electoral College, Current
Event Issues around the world, voting, etc. Also when you look at
the issues the candidates are debating over, a lot of those topics
are important in our curriculum such as, economy, war, abortion (Roe
v Wade), Crime and Punishment, Immigration, etc. I think I will
have an opportunity to constantly come back to this project
throughout the year and relate curriculum topics to topics students
choose to research during this project.
5. Outline Describing Content
With this email I have also attached a
copy of directions that I gave to the students.
6. Software to be used, internet
materials, contacts, etc.
Earth Walk – Class set of 25 lab tops
Library
Newspaper for Current Events
LCD Projector During the Debate
Outside Resources (That kids on their
own choose)
7. Level of Student Involvement
The project is solely placed on the
students lap as far as involvement. They are the ones research two
problems that feel are important, researching the stand each
candidate has on their problems, and then choosing a candidate to
defend and reasons why they are defending them during the debate.
8. Evaluation process (include students
when possible)
Students will be graded on two different
papers that they will submit to me at the appropriate time. They
will also have to hand in their one page write the lists the
candidate they choose and the reasons why they feel the candidate is
best for the job. In the end they will receive a grade for the
actual participation in the live debate that will be held in class.
9. Timeline: how you envision the
project being carried out between start up and conclusion
Attached within the email
10.
Comments or Questions:
I am not completely sure just yet how I am
going to wrap up this entire project in November. Some of the
choices I am still considering are, create a podcast of the live
debate that takes place in my class, or having each side create an
informational power point on each candidate that will describe the
platform of each side Republican or Democrat. I think I will need
to wait until the first paper is submitted to me so I can see all
the different topics students chose to research and discuss. Right
now I am leaning towards each side creating a power point that will
describe the specific candidate, and his stance on the variety of
issues the students research.
Current Event Project
Election Day
Introduction:
The idea behind this project is to create a
basic understanding of who the candidates are and what they plan to
do if they get elected. As a high school student I understand it
can be difficult to find a huge interest in the election because you
are not able to participate on November 4th, (Election
Day). However it is important that you learn about these candidates
and what they stand for because it will be YOU who has to make the
decision in four years to re-elect the President or not. Through
this project it is my hope that you create a solid understanding of
the 2 major party candidates and their ideas that they wish to
promote.
Assignment 1: DUE OCTOBER 6TH
In this first assignment I
want you to research two topics that you feel are important to you.
As students approaching the end of your high school career you will
be entering into either the workforce or furthering your education
most likely someplace other than Horseheads, NY. As future adults
of society what issues most concern you?
Abortion
Budget & Spending
Civil Rights
Corporations/Regulation
Crime & Punishment
Drug Policy
Education
Energy Policy
Environment
Family Values
Foreign Policy
Gun Control
Health Care
Immigration
Iraq & "War on Terror"
Jobs & Unemployment
LGBT Rights
National Security
Oversight & Reform
Social Security
Stem Cell Research
Tax Policy
Technology/Infrastructure
Trade & Globalization
Welfare & Poverty
Choose two of these topics and write a 2-3
page paper discussing the background of the problem and why this is
a concern for you in the future. The idea of this particular paper
is for you to describe the current situation of the two issues you
have selected. Why are they hot topics in the news right now? How
will they affect you as a citizen in the future? What are some of
the possible solutions out their right now for solving this problem?
What are the pros and cons of these solutions?
As part of this assignment you need to include
three outside resources from this class to go along with your
paper. They can be from a newspaper, periodical, magazine,
internet, etc… You must include documentation from the articles
within your paper as well as a work cited page at the end of your
paper.
Assignment 2: DUE OCTOBER 31ST
Now that you have
researched two topics that most concern you, it is time to figure
out how the candidates feel about your pressing matters. In this
paper I want you to research each presidential candidate and figure
out how they plan on addressing the problems that mostly concern
you. What are their ideas for this issue if they were elected
president? How does the other side feel about the ideas? Do they
agree with what is being said, or do they feel a totally different
approach needs to be implemented?
In a 2-3 page paper you need to
find the solutions both Presidential Candidates have for the two
matters that most concern you. You also once again need to include
three outside resources to include into your paper, with a work
cited page attached.
Assignment 3: DUE NOVEMBER 4TH
You need to choose a
candidate and write a one page paper that discusses why you feel
that presidential candidate should be elected president. What are
the views that most appeal to you, why do you think they would do a
good job solving problems our country faces, and what makes them
more appealing then the other candidate? On November 4th
this one page paper will be the outline of a live debate that takes
place during the class period. It will be up to the students to
divide themselves up based on who they are supporting and conduct a
controlled debate within the classroom. At the end of the debate we
will take a vote of the class and decide if we were able to predict
the next President through our own personal research.
Christopher M. Clark
Horseheads Central School District
11th Grade United States History
and Government
Project Title: Election Day
The project that I developed this
year for “TDHAH” revolved around the Presidential Election. The
idea behind the project was to create interest and enthusiasm around
the election even though the students in my classroom could not
technically participate on Election Day. As a teacher who works
with juniors in High School I did not have anyone old enough to vote
in November. Due to the fact that many students in my classroom
took the attitude of (because I can’t vote my opinion does not
matter so who cares about the election) I wanted to create a project
to allow students to research the candidates and voice their opinion
on the issues. The main idea that I kept trying to express to the
students was even though they cannot vote for the next President of
the United States it will be up to them to decide if the next
President of the United States get re-elected or not. This is why
it is important to listen to the promise they make during their
campaigns and decide how efficient they really are at following
through on their promises.
Monday September 15th
Today I introduced the project to
my classes and I had a lot of mixed emotions. You could tell some
of the students who were into politics were very excited about the
opportunity to spend class time talking about the issues, the
candidates, and future of this county. I could tell other students
in the class were dreading this project at first because they spend
so little time paying attention to the news and newspapers they felt
like this was going to be a lot of work for them.
The idea of the project was
simple. It is a current event project that revolves around the
election currently going on. The idea behind this project is for it
to be completed outside of class. I purposely set this project up
so they would have zero time in the classroom to work on it other
then our debate on Election Day. The purpose of this project is to
encourage students on their own time to turn on the news, watch some
of the debates, or read the newspaper to discover for themselves
what is going on, without me telling them. Once again, even though
students are not able to vote in this election they still need to be
paying attention because it will be them deciding whether or not our
President gets re-elected.
October 6th
The first piece of the project was due October
6th. In this first assignment students had to select two
topics that they feel are personally the most important to them. I
gave my students a list of topics that they could choose from and I
wanted them to select two that they felt were the most important to
them personally. I tried to express to the students that voting for
a president is not just voting for a guy who you think might be a
good president. It is about taking a personal stand on different
issues and then getting a feel for which Presidential Candidate has
the closest opinion on those very same topics. As citizen in this
country you are going to develop things you need and it is important
that you discover which candidate is going to advocate for those
things the most.
This first part of the project was
pretty simple I thought, and based off the results of it I think the
students felt the same. They each picked two problems and had to
discuss why it is an issue? For example what is the background of
the problem, why is it something that you are particularly concerned
about, and based off the research you have done what are some
possible suggestions to solving this problem?
It was interesting looking at the
results of the first piece of the project. I only have two United
States History classes this semester so comparing the issues that
students choose from one class to another was extremely
interesting. The most popular topics of my morning class were
Abortion, Health Care, the War on Terror, and Taxes. My afternoon
class focused on Abortion, Crime and Punishment, Energy Policy,
Family Values, the War on Terror, and LGBT Rights. It was
interesting looking at the topics that the students find most
important to their own lives. Especially that each period mainly
focused around the same set of issues but from one period to another
the issues were slightly different.
October 31st
The second piece of the project
was due on Halloween. This is what I felt was really the bulk of
the project. After sitting down and discussing it with my students
I got the feeling that they felt the same way. This was probably
the piece of the project that required the most research, the most
time spent, and the by far the most essential piece of the project.
Now that each student has two
topics that they both feel strongly about but they now have two
topics that they have conducted research on. The next step of the
project is to take the problems that they have research and figure
out where both McCain and Obama stand in regards to these problems.
Do they consider them problems at all? Do they feel that these
issues are among the most important or are the candidates planning
on putting these particular issues on the back burner? Finally, if
these are problems that the candidates are planning on resolving
what are their actual plans to resolve them?
I think this piece of the project
gave students a good perspective of what politics is all about. A
lot of my students were very frustrated during this part of the
project because they kept feeling as though the candidates were not
very clear and concise about how they wanted to handle certain
issues. Some topics the candidates would just dance around when
asked about the issue and therefore my students felt they really
were not getting the clear cut easy answer that they hoped for.
This is a great lesson for them on how real politics actually work.
We used this issue to heavily discuss campaigning and what it takes
to win over the majority of the country so that you can be the man
everyone wants to vote for. Politics can be a very sneaky game at
times and this piece of the project showed my students just how
sneaky it can be, because some of them felt a lot of their questions
were left unanswered. So although I felt the students overall did a
nice job with this piece of the project I also was glad to see some
of their frustrations in the answers they were coming up with from
the candidates. It is important that they start to understand
politics and what they are all about.
November 4th
The final piece of the puzzle was
due on November 4th, Election Day. Each student in the
class had to now select a candidate based off the research they have
conducted. Now that they have researched two issues that they feel
strongly about and also have researched how each candidate feels
about both of those issues they now can begin thinking about which
candidate they would like to see become President.
On this final day of the project I
had three different activities planned. The first thing that the
students had to do was to show up to class with a one page paper
that identified who they wanted to win the election and why. Then
by using the facts in this paper we divided up the class and had
about a thirty minute debate on who should be the next President of
the United States. I was very impressed with this portion of the
project because I think the students took it very seriously and got
a lot out of it. In my morning class it was pretty 50/50 between
Obama supporters and McCain supporters. My afternoon class was much
more Obama. Out of 25 students I had 17 that wanted Obama to win
and only 8 for McCain. However the McCain supporters did a great
job of defending their side of the argument even though they were
severely out numbered.
When the debate was over I took my
classes down to the computer lab to participate in this GST BOCES
Mock Election. This was extremely interesting because not only did
we see the outcome of our own results but we could see how other
schools across the area using this same Mock Election voted. It was
good for the students to see that because they felt like they were
really involved in the election. They enjoyed being able to look at
the results of other classes and other schools from around our area
of the state.
Reflection
I think this project went very
smoothly and actually it went better then I anticipated. It was
kind of a shot in the dark because it would have been very easy for
students to claim they were not interested in the election and put
forth little effort into the work. However, I think the exact
opposite happened and students found this to be an excellent
opportunity to have their opinion heard. Even students who started
off with a negative attitude about having to do this came around and
received great participation and finished products on November 4th.
One of the things that I liked
about this project was the way I set it up. Like anything else in
education you have to have a hook in order to get students
involved. I think by starting off the project with the students
researching two issues they felt strongly about was a great way to
get encourage the students to want to learn more. Once they had
their problems they were all very excited to see what the candidates
had to say about their issues.
One thing I would have changed
about this project was how I conducted our Election Day activities.
Although I thought the students did a great job with the debate I
felt like maybe the students should have been given an opportunity
to correspond with each other a little more prior to the debate.
One of the hold ups surrounding
the debate was the topics that certain students chose. For example
I had a student in my morning class choose Technology/Infrastructure
as a topic to research. She did a fantastic job researching this
topic and found a lot of great information however she was the only
one in the class to select this topic. So even though she
participated in the debate and brought up some very good points no
one else had any knowledge of the topic to really debate against
her. So personally I felt bad because here is this student that did
all sorts of preparation to be ready on debate day and nobody really
else had the topic so nobody else had the information to debate with
her.
As I sit back and think about ways
to make the project better one of the things that I thought about
was allowing another class or group of students to observe our
debate. For example on Election Day inviting a class maybe from the
middle school over and letting them hear students debate about the
topics. Then allow the students who observed to participate in the
BOCES mock election and see how our live debated influenced who they
voted for. This way the students in my class get a chance to see
how their information and research can influence the opinions of
others.
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