Arctic Classroom: ELECTION DAY 3rd Grade Dramatic Play

I think more people would vote if they grew up "playing" this way.

We held a primary where 8/9 students decided to run for class president. We divided them up into 2 parties (Red) and (Blue). The students then wrote a speech detailing what rules they would make up if they were elected president or what projects we should do. "10 burpees for getting lost in the woods, writing a story a week, and exercise (Soccer once a week)" "If you get lost, you would have to skip count to 100 and lose centers for half an hour" "I would be a good president good helper" "You would have to practice read live and do 5 basketball shots. If you have something wrong in the text book, you have to practice hard spelling words. If you be mean, you have to sit in the corner."

Our rules were you had to: vote for one person from the red team, one person from the blue team and could not vote for yourself.

I was impressed. Each student got at least one vote. The boys race was pretty tight with 5 votes to 4 for their nominee. The girls was spread out, with the winning candidate with 3 votes and 2 with 2. Two people only wrote one candidate instead of two. I was surprised because I voted too and I was surprised at some of the kids who had gotten a large number of votes.

I made a slide showing candidate slogans and the students made up posters for both nominees. The red team had a great slogan "I will make you proud" The blue team had a slightly negative poster. So I talked to them about why you would want to run a positive campaign.

As the candidates wrote their final speeches, one of the twins brought up that maybe we should be different parties: "like one thinks that everyone should have the same rules and one thinks that we should have different rules" Another of the twins brought up "I think that here and Germany have different rules and so we should have different rules. If someone from Germany came here to learn Gwichin, it would be hard for them"

The rules for the general election was: I was going to vote, everyone could choose to vote or not, and candidates were allowed to vote for themselves.

We talked about why voting was important and just because you are a boy, you dont have to vote for the blue team. We also talked about endorsements which means that you tell who you are going to vote for. We talked about canvasing and talking to each other to convince people to join your team.

"I'm not voting till he tells me" One of the girl twins declared meaning she was going to listen to the issues before making a decision and blindly voting for her sister on the red team.

In the Makerspace: they created campaign videos on puppet pals "I am Jane and I approve this message"(https://vimeo.com/190778391), used cardboard and cloth to make a polling station, created ballots, and even had a place to "register" to vote. Dramatic Play at its finest. One student became a handler trying to keep the candidate on task (they were trying to do something on the ipad rather than working on the campaign "You are being lazy and it makes me not want to vote for you anymore"), another became a reporter to ask them policy questions "What rules would you make?" Another became a "speech writer" and wrote speech for the candidate (The candidate upon reading their speech: "I dont want to say that, it sounds creepy and weird") They also worried about a rigged election "Maybe people should write their names on their ballots so we know that they didn't vote twice" Another student pulled up his hood and was the "secret service" ("You cannot bother President Travis right now" They made earpieces out of straws)