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| Mr. Shields in front of Electoral Voting map. | 203 KB |
On February 4, 2011 in Mr. Shields’s eighth-grade U.S. History class, students had the chance to experience the voting process that is used when electing U.S. presidents. But for this activity, they used the Super Bowl teams instead of presidential candidates. Here’s how it worked: Each student drew a state out of a box with the number of electoral votes that state gets. Then they cast their vote on a ballet and passed it up their row. As Mr. Shields read the results, a student selected that state on the projected map and changed it to blue or red, depending on what team the students in class voted for.
Mr. Shields came up with this idea. “Just one year, I tried to think of a better way to help the students understand how the electoral college system works. One year I actually had the students participate in a mock presidential election. Then I just had the idea to do the same mock election about who the students wanted to win the Super Bowl. It seemed like a successful activity, so I’ve done it ever since,” he said.
This activity was meant to help students understand how the election works. Claire Bunnell, an eighth grader here at SJHS, learned that each state gets a certain number of votes according to the population. She also added, “It was very entertaining! Better than doing work!”
The overall winner between the Packers and the Steelers were the Packers.