Teachers looking for ways to engage their students on issues around the upcoming elections have a new way to use an old favorite classroom resource: The Mini Page.
LEARN NC, an outreach program of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Education, has published an online guide to help teachers use the Mini Page Archive to teach election history and process. The guide shows how to use Mini Page articles to introduce students to the two-party system, explain the workings of the Electoral College, suggestions on how to hold your own classroom election, and more. The guide includes links to the relevant Mini Page articles.
“The Mini Page is a versatile tool for all K-12 teachers and students,” said Summer Pennell, a UNC School of Education doctoral student and creator of LEARN NC’s Mini Page Archive election guide. “Students enjoy using the Mini Page, and this archive gives teachers a convenient way to teach about topics that are in the news today. It is valuable for teachers looking for creative and fun ways to teach a variety of topics, including American politics.”
The Mini Page Archive, available through the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill libraries at http://www.lib.unc.edu/dc/minipage/, digitally preserves the weekly newspaper feature targeted mainly at children, their parents, and educators. The archive includes issues published from 1969 to 2007.
LEARN NC’s Mini Page Archive election resources include a guide for elementary teachers and two lesson plans for middle and high school teachers.
The LEARN NC elementary guide is available at http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/mini-election-elem. The secondary lesson plans, “Presidential Elections and American Culture” and “Making Inferences about the 2000 Presidential Election” are available at http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/7618 and http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/7619, respectively.
LEARN NC serves more than 30,000 teachers and students daily, delivering continually updated lesson plans, best practices and classroom content to schools in 50 states, 145 countries, and all 115 North Carolina school systems via www.learnnc.org.