Citizenship at key stage 3 (Year 7-9)
Unit 06: Government, elections and voting
Section 3: How are election campaigns organised?
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Objectives |
| Children should learn: |
- about the nature of election campaigns
- about how politicians try to win votes
- to explore issues in role-play (NSE)
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Activities |
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Outcomes |
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Children: |
- Encourage pupils to analyse political publicity campaigns to build on their media skills. Focus on how political parties try to influence the public, eg through campaigning (highlighting their own strengths and their opponents' weaknesses). Draw comparisons between local and national media approaches. Look at the publicity material and the party political broadcasts. Are they effective? Are any particular examples likely to be more successful than others? Why do main political parties spend so much on advertising? How do smaller political parties compete?
- Alternatively, pupils could stage mock elections, as political candidates masterminding their own campaigns. Give pupils information about the ingredients of a modern campaign to get them started, eg nomination, policies (manifesto), speeches (hustings), press releases, rebuttal of opponents' messages. This activity also develops teamwork skills as it requires careful planning and coordination between team members.
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- understand how politicians try to appeal to voters through different ways of campaigning
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Points to note |
- This section is most relevant around the time of real elections. It can be linked to school elections. It also links with unit 14 'Developing skills of democratic participation'.
- Link with NSE: year 7 S&L15, year 8 S&L14, year 9 S&L12.
- www.learn.co.uk/yvote provides information about mock elections.
- BBC Parliament and government CD-ROM includes election campaigns and videos.
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This unit is divided into sections. Each section contains a sequence of
activities with related objectives and outcomes. You can view this unit by
moving through the sections or print/download the whole unit.
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