The Right To Vote

Content Objectives

Students will:

• Learn about the concept of the right to vote.
• Access prior knowledge and build background about why voting is an important way of making a choice.
• Explore and apply the concept of why a democracy needs people to vote, and why people deserve to be able to do so.

Language Objectives

Students will:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the concept of the right to vote.
• Orally use words that describe the electoral process and why it is important to a democracy.
• Extend oral vocabulary by speaking about how a society can stay progressive through voting.
• Use key concept words [vote, election, Constitution, march, concur, democratic, amendment, suffrage, protest, advocate, progressive].

Other

Explain

• Use the slideshow to review the key concept words.
• Explain that students are going to learn about the right to vote:
• How a vote can be held.
• Why elections are important to a democracy.
• Who deserves to vote and why.
• Why it is important that everyone who is eligible to vote does so.

Model

• After the host introduces the slideshow, point to the photo on screen. Ask students: What are these students doing? (They are voting.) How do you know they are voting? (They are raising their hands to show whether or not they choose something.)
• Ask students: How else can a vote be held? (By filling out a ballot).
• Say: Sometimes people disagree about something. How is voting a good way to make a decision when this happens? (It allows everyone's opinion to be counted towards a decision.)

Guided Practice

• Guide students through the next two slides, showing them that the right to vote is so important that people have fought to earn it in the past. Always have the students describe why or why not someone should be able to vote.

Apply

• Play the games that follow. Have them discuss with their partner the different topics that appear during the Talk About It feature.
• After the first game, ask students to talk about what a mock election is and why it could be useful. After the second game, have them discuss who has the right to vote and who does not.

Close

• Ask students: Why do you think the right to vote is so important? Explain why everyone should vote and what would happen if they failed to do so.
• Summarize for students that voting is important because it is a way of expressing your opinions. By voting, we all contribute to making a difference and bringing about change. We can vote for or against new laws, and we can vote for who we would like to be in office. Not everyone has always had the right to vote and there are still some places in the world today where people can't vote. Encourage them to think about how things would be different if we could not vote.