Inquiry Project
Laney Grady
PBL QUESTION DEVELOPMENT
1) Voting in the 2016 Election
2) What effect would you not casting your vote, if you are eligible to do so, have on the potential outcome of the 2016 race?
a. What if everyone had the mindset “I’m only one vote, it won’t matter if I don’t cast mine”?
b. Does not voting mean you don’t know who to vote for, you are uneducated on the candidates or that you don’t think you matter?
3) What effect would you not casting your vote, if you are eligible to do so, have on the potential outcome of the 2016 race?
4) Yes, this will require research on who votes who doesn’t and where most of the votes come from and why people vote.
a. Yes, hopefully it will encourage students to get educated and to cast their vote.
b. Yes, it will require them to defend all possible solutions, evaluate who does vote and why, analyze what makes the outcome of an election, and defend why or why not they want to vote and if their vote will matter.
This activity will be about voting in the 2016 election. Students will be asked the questions above. The introduction of the activity will be having the class watch the 2016 presidential debate and noting the tactics the candidates use.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=855Am6ovK7s
This will be the grabber. This will gets student fired up and interested in the topic. It will allow them to see the issues and understand how the candidate they side with is. Students will also submit some write up and consensus of the debate. Students can write a paper, make a prezi, make a video, a poster, or anything else. This is to show their experience had when watching the debate and then to show how they made their decision.
Students will have access to a class google document in which students can write the pros and cons of each candidate. Through students responses on this google doc I will group them based on whose comments were the most similar. Ideally there will be three groups: republican, democrat, and other. Students will then present the reasons that their candidate is the ideal one.
Next, after the presentation, students will select one group member from each party. They will hold a mock debate in the classroom, answering the questions not based on their own opinions but on the candidate they have decided to side with. This will give students a chance to embody what their candidate thinks and also role-play and have a little fun with this assignment.
The final debate will be graded on authenticity, dress, how they answered the questions, and how involved each member was in preparing their representative.
Rubric:
Authenticy: 25 points, did the student embody the character and answer questions in which the candidate would? Were they appropriate? Did they answer or avoid the question?
Dress: 10 points, did the students and representatives dress business casual? Did they embody the character and dress of their candidate?
Participation: 25 points, did each student participate to help write or answer the questions? Was their evidence of research to ensure that students helped and watched the debate? Did they turn in their write-up of the debate and their decision on who they sided with?
Collaboration: 40 points, did the students help and participate? How was their attendance during the process of the lesson? Did students provide individual research and write-ups and help the whole group?
Ideally, at the end of the lesson, we will take a day to help those who are 18, because it is a senior English class, to help register to vote and hopefully schedule it into the voting day to allow them to vote and demonstrate the importance of voting.