Mrs. Smith for President... updated

My class has been learning about the election process and why we vote.  We have also been learning how to write opinion and persuasive pieces of writing.  These fit so well together.

We started out the week reading non-fiction books about presidents, past and present and also about the voting process.  We read picture books about certain characters who wanted to run for President also.  I was setting them up for a mock election.  In this mock election for President was going to be Duck {from Duck for President}, a little girl named Grace {from Grace for President}, and myself {from My Teacher for President}.  We also voted for line leader next week, which was totally not planned for.

In our persuasive writing, I was going to have the kids write about why they would make a good line leader and how could they persuade me to let them be line leader.  I used this teachable moment and made it come true.  I saw how excited they all got about their writing this piece.  So I told them, after we conference one on one,  I will pick the writing pieces who had a clear opening, three reasons supporting why, and a closing.  I had five who went above and beyond.  Out of these five, there were a couple who actually have not produced a solid piece of writing yet this year and struggled quite a bit, I was SO proud of them.  These five were on the ballot for line leader.

On Friday, we used the smart board and graphed our data while counting the votes for President and Line Leader.  I am proud to say we have a new line leader for next week AND I won the mock Presidential vote.  I came out with 13 votes, Grace for 2 votes, and Duck also with 2 votes.

On Tuesday of next week {Election Day} our school is holding a Kids Vote along side all of the other voters in our community.  They will get to go into the polling site at our school and really place a vote for the President of the United States just like their families and as a school we will have a winner.  I think this is such a great learning experience for the kids of our school!!

This was the craft the kids made on Friday.  With their craft, they had to write "If I were President, I would..."  Some of them were hilarious.  I got a few that said they would build more childrens hospitals, give people food, fix the spaceship, and my favorite..."If I were President, I would give everyone a puppy." WINNER!!!

Our polling stations:

The results are in: