Election Vocabulary Brainstorm

Grade Levels: 5 - 8

Objectives

• Students will be introduced to vocabulary related to elections.
• Students will generate questions about campaigns and elections.
• Students will paraphrase articles.
• Students will generate a class vocabulary list.

Materials

• Dictionaries
• Current newspapers with election coverage, or articles from the web
• Paper, pens

Procedures

1. Students take out a piece of paper and for one minute write down all of the election related words they can think of.
2. After the time is up, list the words on the board.
3. Organize the students into groups and have each group look up a set of the brainstormed words.
4. Each group shares the definitions with the class.
5. Distribute current newspapers (or references) with election coverage.
6. Each group should read the materials and do the following:
1. Be able to paraphrase for the class what was read.
2. Think of three questions about the article.
3. Try to find the vocabulary words in the articles, writing down the sentences in which they're found.
4. Try to find other campaign vocabulary words in the articles, writing down the sentences in which they're found.
7. Each group then presents their paraphrases, asks their questions, and reads the sentences containing the vocabulary.
8. As a class, generate a final list of election vocabulary for study and testing.