This term we have started doing student vote.  We have been working with Tami and Karim’s classes.  Student Vote is really great because it shows the adults in Canada what the kids would prefer.  Student Vote is also good because it helps kids know how to vote, so they are prepared to vote in the future.

Some activities we have done are What In The World, “Democracy or Dictatorship?” and “Let’s Eat”.  WITW was an activity where we read and picked out key words and used them to answer questions, as well as some general questions about parliament and elections.  “Democracy or Dictatorship?” was an activity where we got a form of questions and we had to choose whether democracy or dictatorship would be a better decision-making process for different problems.  For example, how to decide which movie to watch or, an accident where someone gets hurt. “Let’s Eat” was a group activity where we tried to decide what food is best for everyone by negotiating. We had to choose based on whether someone was vegetarian or didn’t like chocolate (which would be surprising) or did not want salad but for a group of 90 students.  That showed us how to make group decisions as if we were an elected politician.

Also a group of kids in our class that have done Student Vote before have come up with questions and with the CIVIX program, chosen a question to submit to the candidates for Prime Minister from the major parties.  The group of students created a series of questions and submitted them to CIVIX and the CIVIX people sent one back that we videotaped to the leader’s debate.  The students “the student vote crew”, met at lunchtime for four days to develop the question and decided on 10-15 to submit.  We debated on which ones we thought were the best. Our guiding principle was to ask questions that would be more than just a Yes or No answer and would cause the leaders to talk about the issue.  The questions that the group created were to concern what would happen now and later, when we will be adults.   The question that CIVIX chose was “What are your ideas and plans to eliminate the use of fossil fuels? What efforts have you or your party made so far? What alternatives do you see being available?”

by THE MANGO 404