If+I+Ran+for+President+Reinforcing+Activity

Introduce the book by talking about who the president currently is and ask students to name some past presidents. Ask students what they know about being the president and how someone can become the president (this will show their prior knowledge). Read the story and then ask students if what they thought before was correct. If it wasn’t, correct it and add new things they learned. Then have students run for a class president. Each student needs to follow the steps the book talks about: deciding to run, deciding beliefs, making posters, and preparing answers to a debate. After they do all of that there will be class debates. 4 students will debate against each other with the teach asking a variety of questions. From there the class will choose a winner of that specific debate. At the end the students will vote for who they believe the best leader would be out of the students who made it onto the ballot. Ideally this unit would be done around election time so the class could follow local elections. This is a multi day lesson with the prior knowledge and book being done on one day, the beliefs and posters on another day, prepping for the debate on a different day, and then finally the debates on the final day or two.

**Additional Standards:** Geography

**Tags:** government, president, United States, democracy. Stier, leader, election, Democrats, Republicans