FIELD EXPERIENCE #7

Domain III, Competency 008

Subcompetencies 1, 2, 3

back to instruction and assessment

Field Experience and Report #7

Kathy Hainey LT3

ACTIVITY ONE:

Title: Why people choose not to vote in Presidential elections.

Grade Level: Secondary

Time Frame: Three 60 minutes class periods.

Goal: Determine why people choose not to vote in Presidential elections and to encourage more people to vote.

Objective: Adult GED government students will discover the reasons other people give for not voting in the Presidential election by interviewing at least 5 people who are not planning to vote in November, and will bring their results to class where they will be compiled into categories of reasons given, so when asked to write an essay on how to encourage more voter participation using proper grammar and mechanics, they will identify the four main reasons people do not vote and offer at least three ways to promote increased voting.

Rationale: Understanding why people do not vote and finding ways to encourage increased voting will help students become more invested in, and better understand, the electoral process themselves. Understanding the inquiry process will encourage the students to evaluate their own involvement in the democratic process and other areas of their lives.

Resources: Friends or family members of the students to be respondents, blackboard and chalk to compile reasons for not voting, and paper and pens for essay writing.

INQUIRY LESSON:

A. Problem presentation: The class was given the opportunity to register to vote by having a Deputy Voter Registrar come to the classroom. The Registrar answered questioned posed by the students regarding who could register and if registration meant they had to vote. After the Registrar left, we had an open discussion about why some students decided to register and others did not. A student asked if the reasons given in class were typical reasons for not voting. We decided to find out by using the Inquiry Method.

B. Hypothesis: Most people who choose not to vote in the Presidential election will state one of these three reasons:

1. my vote doesn’t really count

2. it doesn’t matter who’s the President

3. I don’t trust any politicians, so why should I vote for him/her?

C. Data Gathering: The students will be given the time over a 5-day fall break to gather data from friends or family, by asking the questions of nonvoters, "What is the main reason don’t you vote in presidential elections?" The responses will be written down by the students and brought back to class.

D. Data Analysis: After the fall break, all responses will be compiled by the class, determining what answer category each response fits into. A tally will be kept on the blackboard for each different category of answer. (The answer categories will each include answers which may not match word-for-word, but match in sentiment or message.)

Assessment of learning:

Over half of the students completed this assignment (N=17) which produced eighty-five responses. While the exact language may not have matched our hypotheses, which was based on students responses, the meaning of the responses were compiled into the following answer categories and frequency of response:

Number Response Category

31 my vote doesn’t count

19 I don’t trust politicians

12 doesn’t matter who’s the President

9 don’t want to be called for jury duty

7 not a US citizen

5 the person I vote for always loses

2 convicted of a felony

While only 17 of 27 students completed this assignment by the due date that is not an unusually low number for the population in my GED class. Those who completed the assignment were excited about the process and were eager to share the information they received. All 17 who completed this assignment were able to obtain answers from 5 different people. All students present in class that day participated in the discussion following the compilation of the responses, whether or not they had contributed data.

The objective stated that the students would discover why 5 people did not vote and bring the results to class. This they did. This raw data was compiled into answer categories by the class. After the compilation of data and a comparison of their findings with their hypotheses, all students present in class that day wrote the assigned essay.

Because of confidentiality, I cannot include any of their essays in this report. I can report some of the ways to promote increased voting by nonvoters that were mentioned by my students. They included informing people that the jury pool comes from licensed drivers not registered voters, handing out a flyer that shows how often one vote made a difference in history (see below), and pointing out the general behavior of the economy when each political party is in power to counter the respondents who said that it didn’t matter who was in charge.

I believe that my stated objectives were met and that my students enjoyed the process of going out and finding an answer for themselves. Some of the students who had given reasons to not vote prior to this lesson, then changed their minds, but it was too late for them to register to vote in this election. While not stated in my original goal or objective, many of the students looked at voter apathy differently after completion of this assignment.

Extension of Activity:

The students copied the results off the board and took them back to show the people they had talked to. A few of them actually offered the handout on the importance of one vote to their respondents. (Below)

ACTIVITY TWO: Done.

ACTIVITY THREE:

I felt that this topic was especially appropriate for my class because the original inquiry came from a student. This lesson became personal for them when they were given the opportunity to register to vote in class and participated in the ensuing discussion about why some people vote and others do not. This was a new lesson, born from a student’s question, but I do think it would be appropriate to use again. It could probably be adjusted slightly to be applied to a number of different questions that come up during class discussions, also.

The sequence of topics seemed to flow naturally from having had the Deputy Voter Registrar come to the class. Prior to the Registrar coming to our class, we had gone over the "How Important Is Your Vote???" transparency and several others encouraging students to consider their responsibility to vote. The discussion following all these activities led to the student’s question, and ultimately to the assignment.

The objectives were appropriate for my students. The inquiry was originated by a student. All the students were capable of completing the homework portion of this assignment. The class compilation of the data involved all of the students who completed the assignment, as well as those who did not but were present in class. Writing essays is an activity we do every week in class, and all who were present for the compilation and discussion were able to write an appropriate essay.

The instruction was aligned with the lessons prior to this one dealing with voting responsibilities. This lesson was the last lesson on the topic of voter registration in the present time. We are now concentrating on the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, and U.S. Supreme Court cases. This lesson went very well with the unit plan of voting responsibilities and whether or not voting matters. I thought the procedures and assessments were consistent with my objectives. The students carried out this assignment as specified in the objective, and the essay provided assessment of their understanding of it.

I think the procedures used for this lesson worked alright, but I have been wondering how I might have made this a better learning experience. I think this lesson did well as far as it went, but I have the feeling it could have been ‘more’. Maybe it is not the procedure that needs adjusting. It may be that I am pondering how to use this basic idea to facilitate learning in other subject areas.

This lesson did not require many materials. The students were responsible for finding their own respondents, and the blackboard and chalk are already in the room. Each student brings their own paper and pen. Copies of the handout "How Important Is Your Vote???" were given to the students who wanted to give it others. If we had poster board available to us, or a computer in the classroom, a better representation of the data could have been made by producing graphs indicating the number in each response category. We do not have these things in our classroom. (We only have the chalkboards because I found someone to donate old ones to my classroom.)

I do not think I could have made the overall environment more conducive to learning. The students who did not complete the assignment were not singled out or left out of the process in any way. Our classroom isn’t much, but we work in it everyday and do the best we can with very little.