High School Presidential Election Projects
Presidential elections are held every four years and, since high school is a four-year program, every student will experience a presidential election at some point in their high school career. Here are several different project ideas that can be assigned to students to get them interested in the presidential election, even if they cannot vote in it.
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Poster Board
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Instruct the students to make a poster board for one of the candidates running for president. The poster board should include the candidate's political affiliations, background information and stance on a few key political issues that are relevant to the election. Then, instruct the students to give a short three- to five-minute presentation on the candidate, using their poster board as a model for the content of the presentation.
Mock Election
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Instruct the students to hold a multi-day mock election. Select a group of five or more students to represent the "blue party" and five or more students to represent the "red party," leaving the rest of the class neutral. Instruct each party to nominate a member of their party to run for the presidency and assign each group a prompt that contains three political issues and their stance on that issue. Homework for the groups is to write speeches conveying the stances given to them in the prompt that will be presented the following day. The neutral students should research both stances for each political issue for homework and be prepared to listen to the speeches when they are presented. The following day, the presidential candidate for each party will give a speech for each political issue and an election will be held to determine who conveyed their stance the most effectively, regardless of what the stance was. Everyone, regardless of party affiliation, will vote in the election.
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Debate
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Instruct the students to watch a presidential debate on television and write down three key issues brought up in the debate and the stance of each candidate on the issue. The next day, collect the debate issues from each student, split the classroom in half, select a political issue from the list and assign one side of the room one stance on that political issue and the other half of the room the opposite stance. Instruct the students to debate the political issue with the opposite side of the room. For the purposes of this project, it does not matter whether or not the student agrees with the stance he is arguing. Debate three separate issues. After the debate is complete, instruct the students to write a short essay that contains their stances on the political issues discussed in class.
Campaign Poster
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Present the students with several examples of campaign posters over the years. Have the students study the posters and see if they can come up with a list of effective campaign poster techniques. Then, instruct the students to create a campaign poster. The poster can either be for one of the presidential candidates participating in the election, for a past presidential candidate or for a fictional candidate. After the posters are completed, hold a short vote to determine which candidate would win based solely on the campaign poster created for them.
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