SGA Election Day

 

Today at school was election day for the SGA!  My scholars were eager to vote.  My teammate said to me yesterday he was going to make "I voted" stickers for the scholars, which reminded me....I use to do a whole voting experience with my first graders!  I went and printed out the voter registration cards that I made way back when.  

Note:  I did add a Zip Code section on their printed copies.

I had some photos of them.  They could choose between the photo I had of them or drawing their own picture.

They worked on those yesterday.

Today when they came in, they saw me dressed like this:

Yes, I am THAT crazy teacher. 
(In case you haven't figured it out yet!)

We do restorative justice peace circles on Friday.  I decided that I was going to incorporate the elections into our peace circle.  

Book available on Amazon.

I then asked the scholars:

1.  What is it important to have a student government?

2.  What makes a great leader?

Then it was time to walk through the hall with all of the candidate's posters.  I created the sample ballots for them to use in the hallway.  I told the scholars how I received a sample ballot for our election.  I filled it out and brought it with me when I voted.  They were going to do the same thing.

Note:  The candidates were introduced in a whole school assembly the other day.  Going back to look at the posters was a great reminder for them.  

I am super lucky to have wonderful co-teacher and paraeducator support in my classroom.  They took my scholars through the hallway, pointed out each section, went over those candidates, and gave the scholars time to fill out their ballot.  

Meanwhile, back in the classroom, the other paraeducator and I set up the classroom to make it look like a voting location!

You can take a quick video tour here!

The line was out the door and down the hall! 

As the scholars came in, they handed me their vote registration card and told me their name.  They also told me their address OR birthday.  I looked at their picture on the back and put a star on their card.  I had tape on the floor just like a real polling place!

Mrs. Schnapp escorted the scholars to their booth and confirmed with them when they were done.  

The scholars went to Ms. Dove for an "I voted" sticker.  

Ms. Shadid did double duty - making the sure line of voters in the hallway wasn't out of control, and then collecting the sample ballots afterwards!  (Actually triple duty - all of these photos are hers!)

It was a great day!  The scholars had a wonderful time!

Thank you to Mr. Mason for the labels - and sparking the memory of what I did with my first graders!

Thank you to Mrs. Schnapp, Ms. Shadid, and Ms. Dove for going along with my crazy ideas and helping out!  I could not have done this without your support!

Thank you Ms. Shadid for taking pictures!

Thank you Ms. Henry and Ms. McNeal for making my evening! :-)

If I forgot to include you in my thank you section - my apologies!

Have a good night and a wonderful weekend!

Fire safety, Halloween, and Elections

We have been having a BLAST in our class!

First, I mentioned in my previous post how we were talking about fire safety.  Here are some pictures of our fire fighter writing / craftivity!

Uh oh!  This one lost a foot!!!

One of my teammates had her students add hoses to it!  It was so cute!
I was originally inspired to do this activity from the Pencils, Glue, & Tying Shoes  blog!


One of my favorite bloggers I follow is Reagan Tunstall!  One of her blog posts from 2013 had all of her bulletin boards in it.  I LOVED her Spiders bulletin board and knew I had to do it with my kiddos!  This is my board from last year.

Here are my pics from this year:

Now my students know that will all our writing crafts, we always do our writing first and then the kids did the art part.  We read some books about spiders.  The students recited facts that they remembered / learned.  As they talked, I wrote the facts on the white board.  The students then chose the ones they wanted to write on their papers.  Afterwards, they made their craft and put it all together! :-)

My students and I also made glow in the dark lanterns which I found here.
I will have to post pictures of that next time as I can't find pictures of the finished product.  Let me tell you though, they were ADORABLE!

I love Election Day activities with my students!  I read 3 books to my kids: Grace for President, Duck for President, and My Teacher for President. Throughout the books, I compared it to a real election.  I then announced that we were going to hold our own election!  The kids wanted to know who was on the ballot so I sad, "Grace, Duck, and.....ME!"  You should have seen and heard their reactions!  It was PRICELESS!!!!!  They were very excited!  Before they could vote, they needed to fill out their voter registration cards!

To help my firsties out with their information, I gave each of them a small card with their information on it.  For their photos, I took a picture of each of them, printed it out, and gave it to them to glue on.  They LOVED it.

I had decorated my room for Election Day.  I had some awesome help from my co-teacher, Jonathan! Even though you can't see it, Jonathan taped off the floor just like they do at the real polling places!

Jonathan's very creative wife made our ballot box!

I also had balloons on every student's seat!

After their cards were filled out it was time to line up to vote!

Jonathan was our electoral judge!

He announced that the polls were open and this is what happened in my class:

One at a time, the students went up to Jonathan.  He took their card, and asked to verify some of the information on there. He then stamped their card AND their hand before giving them their ballot.

Students then came over here to cast their vote.

Then they put their ballot in the box and I gave them each a sticker for voting!

They all had a blast!  Afterwards, Jonathan read out the votes.  We made a graph and the students interpreted the information! 

For those of you wondering, here's how the votes stacked up:
Grace - 0
Duck - 3
Me - 9!   I won! :-)

Afterwards, the students did a writing on why they thought I would make a good President.  I can't wait to read those!

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Until next time!!!
Stacey