I’ve always believed that one of the roles of educators is to help their students become well-informed, curious, and active citizens. The election lesson ideas and resources from PBS LearningMedia can make it easier to bring current events into your classroom. On their Election Central website you will certainly find lots of great tools to use this school year!
Election Lesson Ideas
News videos: PBS LearningMedia’s Election Central has videos for students and teachers to explore. These selections come from PBS Newshour and are geared towards students in middle school and high school.
Lesson plans: The collection of lesson plans on this website include a range of topics related to the election. Teachers will find election lesson plans on social media’s influence on voters and an exploration of how to host a debate.
Election process: In this section of the site you’ll find resources to help students understand the election process. These videos can be used by teachers to introduce campaign strategies and the nomination process.
More election lesson ideas
Debate prep: This area of PBS Learning Media’s website includes lesson plans and resources to bring debating into your classroom. The lesson overviews are for older students. But they also have plenty of information you could tailor to upper elementary school classrooms.
Election history: If you want your students to learn more about elections in the past you can introduce them to the stories from American history. This might connect to your current unit of study. Or regardless of your unit, you might let students choose to explore something base don their interest.
Inaugural addresses: Primary source documents can certainly connect to explorations of elections from today and in the past. There are inaugural addresses from Nixon to Roosevelt on this site.
President videos: This collection of 60-second videos are perfect for short introductions to different historical features. Students can watch videos on John Tyler, Millard Fillmore and more!
How are you bringing current events and the election into your classroom? You can also share your experiences in the comments below!