My oldest student is using the fabulous cards from Emily O'Connor over at Truer Words as her spelling lists (there are four sets of these wonderful cards; you can find them here). Some of these are morphological relatives; others are etymological relatives.
I also did a deep dive into the upcoming General Election. I first had my students gather in pairs and use a graphic organizer to list things they already knew about the upcoming election and questions they still had.
Then I spent some time answering their questions!
We discussed the three branches of government at both the national and local level, as well as the basic concept of representative democracy.
We looked at the U.S. Senate being fair in one way (each state has the same number of senators - 2) and the U.S. House of Representatives being fair in another way (each state's number of representatives is based on population, and changes every 10 years in response to the Census).
In the 2022 midterm elections, per the 2020 United States census, Illinois lost a congressional seat.
- Note: This also means that a state's number of electoral votes in the Electoral College keeps changing, so if you have a copy of Election Night, make sure it's the board for the 2028 Presidential Election!
Every State is allocated a number of votes equal to the number of Senators and Representatives in its U.S. Congressional delegation -- two votes for its Senators in the U.S. Senate plus a number of votes equal to the number of its Congressional districts.
We also looked at preview ballots for Jackson, Williamson, and Perry counties, provided by the County Clerks. We sent these home, and I encouraged the children to ask their parents about their Voting Plan.
I showed my class the Illinois State Board of Elections District Locator website at arcgis, where you can type in your street address and get a list of your current elected officials:
- President of the United States
Vice President of the United States
United States Senator
United States Congressperson
Governor
Lieutenant Governor
Attorney General
Secretary of State
State Comptroller
State Treasurer
State Senator
State Representative
Judicial District
At their request, and to help answer a lot of their questions about the nuts & bolts of the actual voting process, we had Bill Sasso come in as a special guest. Bill has served as an election judge many times, and was able to walk us through the entire process. He showed us a sample of the voter registration form, and explained how election judges confirm identity on the day of voting, and what they do if someone has voted early or already voted in another polling location. He explained spoiled ballots, contested ballots, and more! He explained how the ballots are physically transported to the courthouse after the polling place closes, and how there are multiple layers of security to ensure that the voting is free and fair and cannot be hacked.
I also found out that our local election judge training is open to anyone in the community who would like to attend. I think that this can help a lot of people who are concerned about election security!
here Zac is being the machine that sucks in the paper ballot!
the paper ballots AND the printed receipt from the machine AND the computer chip from the machine are all transported securely to the courthouse after the polls close
Be like the cool kids!
VOTE!!!!
Immersive Experience
Immersive Experience
Immersive Experience
Immersive Experience
