Glastonbury Foreign Language Program
Curricular Unit: Government Comparisons (Spanish)
Lesson Title: Voting simulation
Grade: 12
Subject/Topic Area(s): government
Key Words: government, voting
Time Frame:
Designed by: M. Zingle

Standards:

Major Standards --
Supporting Standards --

Materials:

Textbook "Many Faces of Mexico"-Lesson 20 (Resource Center of the Americas)
Box for ballot collecting

Brief Summary of Lesson:

Using exercise in Many Faces of Mexico, Lesson 20-Casting a Vote, Simulating Mexico's Electoral System, students will do in-class simulation of voting system in Mexico prior to 2001. Students will discuss differences between voting processes in United States and Mexico. Students will answer question on comparison of two governments.

Activities:

1. All students' names will be put on a Voter Registration sheet. The students will be assigned different "roles" that they will play during the simulation.

2. Voting will take place with students playing their roles: as PRI party members intimidating voters at the polling station, as members of indigenous groups who cannot read the ballots (written in Spanish), as voters who vote many times using fake IDs, and as voters who obtain more than one ballot to stuff the box.

3. Voting will proceed in such a way as to ensure a PRI win. After the ballots have been counted, class will discuss simulation - was voting fair? why or why not? what were some examples of suspicious activity? how do they feel about the process?

Identify Desired Results

What do they already know that will help them learn new information? Where and when did they learn it?

Previous units on Mexico

Students will understand...

 

Student will know...

 

Student will be able to...

 

New vocabulary, structures acquired:

Determining acceptable evidence

Performance Tasks:

Other evidence:

Examples of Student Work: