Lesson Plan - Warm Up: Voting Simulation & Discussion

1. Materials:

• Optional - Paper ballots that are different colors to help delineate students from Location A or Location B.

2. Voting Simulation:

• Identify a section of the classroom (no more than one fourth of the class) as Location B and the rest of the classroom as Location A. It is necessary for all the students to remain in the seats they first sat down in for the duration of the class.

• Introduce a controversial issue (abortion, death penalty, stem cell research) that would result in a close election. Tell the students that they are going to vote on the issue, a FOR or AGAINST decision.

• Identify the choices (FOR or AGAINST) that will be present on the ballot. You can conduct the vote a variety of ways, and some suggestions include:
  • Hand out the ballots only to students sitting in Location A.
  • Hand out ballots to everyone, but collect them only from Location A. Throw away/tear up the ballots from Location B.
  • Paper votes can be substituted for a hand count. Count only the hands of students sitting in Location A

• Tally the votes of the students in Location A. When students in Location B complain, explain that they should have sat/been assigned outside of Location A if they wanted to participate in the election. Share the results with the class.

3. Discussion:

• Pose some questions to the class to stimulate discussion of their feelings. Introduce the idea of civil rights and voting.

• Are students from Location B willing to let students only from Location A make decisions that will affect all of them without their input?

• Who should make the decisions that will affect all of them?

• Describe what you think would be a more fair situation.

• Should students from Location B just move to Location A? Should they have to?

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