Election 2012 Teaching Resources to Address Common Core Standards

The 2012 election process provides educators with a multitude of materials to use to help students meet the Common Core Standards. By examining the election process with students through print, visual, and digital texts, teachers can address virtually all of the standards for reading for informational text, many of the writing standards, and most of the speaking and listening standards.

Here are some resources that I’ve compiled from my personal learning network that may be useful to you as you plan your instruction during this election season.

Ryan Goble, the co-chair of NCTE’s Media and Digital Literacies Collaborative, made me aware of the following resources:

• A piece by Frank Baker, media literacy author and consultant,  on “Here Come the Conventions” in USA Today Teacher’s Lounge
• A posting by Frank Baker on Middle Web about “What Students Should Know about Campaigns and the Media”
• Another posting by Frank Baker on Middle Web about “Presidential Debates are Teachable Moments” (also from the NCTE Connected Community Literacy Discussion Group)

(You may also be interested in checking out the Ning that Ryan maintains, Making Curriculum Pop, or you may want to follow him on Twitter at @_mindblue_ .)

From following a link in a posting to the NCTE Connected Community Media Literacy Discussion Group, I discovered Frank Baker’s Media Literacy Clearinghouse and a particular webpage relevant to the election season:

• Frank Baker’s webpage on The Role of the Media in Politics

In addition, he has a book devoted to this topic, Political Campaigns and Political Advertising: A Media Literacy Guide.

While on Middle Web, I found the following Resource Roundup:

• “Learning about Elections”

From my Twitter feed, I learned about the following resources:

• The Newseum: Decision 2012 
• Flocabulary: Presidential Campaign Ads Lesson Plan
• Library of Congress: Presidential Elections: Newspapers and Complex Text (archival materials from past elections)
• New York Times Learning Network: Election 2012: Teaching Ideas and Resources

From the September 26, 2012 Daily Dulcinea, I became aware of the following materials:

• An article about the landmark Kennedy-Nixon debate, information about the history of presidential debates, and a link to a resource for transcripts of every presidential debate since 1988

 The PBS Education e-newsletter shared information about election resources in PBS LearningMedia. This free content library contains lesson plans, videos, audio recordings, and interactive tools.

Please let me know whether you have any other resources you’d like me to add to this posting.