Wanting to let the Lower School students experience an election while letting them make their own choices, the fourth grade teachers came up with a great alternative to the typical presidential election.  It was an election about books!  Prior to the week of election, each fourth grader selected a book to read.  After completing the book, they came up with a way to entice other children to read their book.  Campaign speeches were given, posters and buttons created, and even an occasional book mark made to hand out to potential voters.  After a week of campaigning, primaries were held in each homeroom and a book was selected to represent that homeroom.

On election day, the two primary candidates met Lower School students as they entered the building to ask them to vote for their book.  During lunch announcements, these two candidates gave their speech to the entire Lower School.  Neither of them used a piece of paper or a teleprompter to read from and yet they were articulate and confident.

After recess, the fourth graders went into each homeroom to distribute ballots and help the younger students with their votes.  During math class, the popular votes were counted and the electoral votes figured out as homerooms were assigned one electoral vote for every five students in their class.
 

To reinforce the idea of electoral votes, all fourth graders played a game on the outline of a United States map.  As they moved to the different states, they could collect the electoral votes in that state only if they answered a math problem correctly.  In this case, the actual electoral votes were used for each state and only one person could capture each state.

The winner of the book election was announced over the PA system.  Unfortunately, one book had to lose but in our hearts all the fourth graders were winners because they helped us understand a very complicated process.  

Nansee Greeley
Lower School Director