Did you hear about our election? It was so much fun!
We did a real simulation of what you will be watching on television tonight to provide the experience, background knowledge, and language of the electoral process to allow your discussions to reach a higher level. It was amazing!
Along with the experience, your child applied the following:
- recognition of "across the disciplines" in action - government, math, and geography
- geographic regions of the United States
- language of the electoral process: democrat, republican, "ahead in the polls", "leaning ___"
- math - regrouping, reading tables and charts (data analysis and statistics), creating a T chart and using it to track incoming information for comparison
- government - "big idea" - every state gets a different number of electoral votes - why?
- change over time - polls are changing as states announce their votes
- analyzing the map that will be seen tonight - blue (democrat) and red (republican)
How did we do it? Your child should be able to tell you all about it. In short, each child was randomly assigned to represent two states. As each state closed the polls and prepared to announce the choice for president, we read the data chart to identify the electoral votes for the state and added it to our running totals for each candidate. Just as it will tonight, we started on the east coast (discussing why and identifying each state in each region) and moved to the states that are usually the deciding factors and likely will be tonight. Your child should be able to tell you which states those are, why they announce later than the east coast states, and how many electoral votes a few different states get (their 2 and California at a minimum). The amount of regrouping (addition) practice we had was incredible in a relevant way. Best of all, when we were finished we had to "prove with evidence" that our totals were accurate.
Other details your child should be able to share: our results, which states typically vote which way in presidential elections (red or blue states - past trends), and how many votes are needed to "win" the election. Hopefully, our real life experience (complete with the interactive white board changing the color of the state to match the elcctoral votes just like on tv tonight) will add detail and fun to your election discussion this evening.
