Create-A-Candidate Civics Activity

Genericbury City Election Activity Teacher Guide:

Goal Statement: Students will be able to analyze how candidates respond to the needs and wishes of the community in order to become more electable, in order to better understand the relationship between representatives and their voters.

2 to 4 50 Minute Class Periods

In this activity, students are wrestling with what it means to be “electable”. They will create a candidate to run against others. This can be assigned as a group assignment (so that 3 or 4 candidates are running against each other in each class), a class assignment (so that each class is constructing one candidate together to run against other sections of the class), or individually (so that each student has the ability to create their own candidate). There are countless extension activities you can do, from holding debates to having the class vote for a candidate other than their own to see who was most convincing. You can also lean into potential “holes” in candidates. For instance, if one group made their candidate a millionaire, maybe that candidate is “out of touch” with regular citizens. If another group made a candidate with 8 kids, maybe they “simply won’t have the time to govern”.

There are a handful of sections students will move through. You can provide the candidate packet to students/groups as a digital file or in printed form:

1.     Candidate Name

2.    Candidate Appearance

3.    Candidate Background and Resume

4.    Candidate Slogan

5.    Campaign Stances

6.    Campaign Finances

You can assist them in these sections and talk about benefits and drawbacks of each decision. This activity is designed to be non-partisan, which is why it is a local election activity. Try to keep students focused on the 5 “major issues” outlined in the activity. You can use the polling section to help them prioritize various issues.

In general this activity can be very fun, and I suggest seeking potential scandals and other events that might happen to the community to spark excitement in the room. This can be a fun activity for students to use their creativity, wit, and sense of humor!

With further questions, reach out to me at tristanjbernhard@gmail.com.

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A 27-slide presentation

A 2-page teacher guide (Word)

A 5-page Candidate Packet for print (Word)

A 4-page Digital Candidate Packet (Word)