What are your Political Viewpoints? A Survey for Middle & High School

What are your Political Viewpoints? A Survey for Middle and High School is an 18-page engaging activity that will help students understand what it means to have a political viewpoint and help them identify where they and a family member fall on the spectrum of political viewpoints for current issues in our nation. It is also an opportunity for students to have a discussion with an adult in their family about politics today.  Finally, students will write a reflection about this activity.

First students identify how familiar they are with 10 key terms: politics, point of view, viewpoint, perspective, spectrum, opinion, fact, liberal, conservative moderate. After that, they will do a reflective writing on facts and opinions with compelling questions guiding them to think deeply about opinions. Then with the teacher's guidance, they will read through a series of statements about key issues today and identify on a scale of 1 to 5 whether they agree or disagree with each statement. Later, at home, they will interview a family member to see where they stand on these issues. They will then write a reflection on what they learned about themselves and their family member. The next day, in small groups,, students will identify key characteristics of liberals and conservatives.

At this age, students are beginning to formulate viewpoints about current issues in our nation. What are your Political Viewpoints? A Survey for Middle and High School offers teachers a way to introduce and discuss with students key issues that many of them care about in a safe and nonjudgmental environment while keeping students engaged.

The lesson includes the following:

• a link to a force copy of the Google Doc so you can edit the survey questions if you need to. (Some of the statements might be troublesome depending on where you teach.  You can easily modify this survey or delete some questions so as not to cause problems with your district’s policies regarding controversial topics and still end up with the same results as long as you change the scoring results.)

• About this Resource--a table for teachers that lists everything in the resource

• A hyperlinked Table of Contents

• Standards, Objectives, and Learning Targets

• An Essential Question-- How do our individual political beliefs shape our understanding of societal issues and influence our perspectives on governance and policy-making?

• 3 Guiding Questions-- 1. How do our responses to specific policy proposals reflect our values and priorities? 2. How are our personal backgrounds and experiences connected to the political ideas we hold? 3. How might our personal experiences and backgrounds influence our attitudes towards government intervention and social justice initiatives?

• Various Handouts

  • Political Viewpoints Terms Activity

  • Reflective Writing on Opinions

  • What Are Your Political Viewpoints? Survey

  • What Do Liberals and Conservatives Believe?

This lesson works well with other Election-related resources in my store. In non-election years, you can use it in a Constitution Unit.