Lesson: Who Picks the President?

Display the Scholastic election website at scholastic.com/election. Have students write the letters A, B, C, and D on separate pieces of paper. In the Civics in Action section, select Quizzes and present the “Can the President Do That?” quiz. Read each question aloud to the class and then have students hold up their answers. Afterward, share the link with the class and allow them to explore the website’s other content on their own.

Post the discussion questions below. Then play the video and have students record their answers to the questions. Hold a class discussion to review students’ responses.

• How often do we elect a new president? (every 4 years)

• Who votes for the president? (Americans don’t vote for the president directly but are voting for the electors who are pledged to support a particular candidate.)

• How many electoral votes does a candidate need to win? (at least 270)

• How is the number of electoral votes for each state decided? (Each state gets the same number of electoral votes as the size of its delegation to Congress, or the number of senators plus the number of representatives in the House. Washington, D.C., gets three electoral votes.)

• Do you think the Electoral College system is fair? Explain your reasoning.

Distribute or digitally share the “3-2-1 Notes” literacy skills sheet. Have students read the article individually and complete their skills sheet. Allow a few volunteers to share the things they discovered and facts they learned. For the “Question You Still Have” section, have students post or share their questions. Allow students to answer each other’s questions, or research the answers to the questions as a group.

Read through the introduction of the “Analyzing Data on a Map” box on page 5. Before working on any questions, allow students to talk about what they notice about the map. (Possible answers: The map has a key and is color coded; small states have their labels outside the state instead of inside; different colors represent different number intervals.) Then have students answer the “Your Turn” questions in pairs. Assign each pair a different question to answer on a piece of paper or in a Google Doc. Allow students to review each other’s solution strategies. If volunteers want to share how they answered a problem differently, allow them to do so.

In “Electoral Outliers,” students learned that there are four presidents who were elected by the Electoral College but who did not win the popular vote. Have students use the article to define popular vote. Then split students into two groups: pro-Electoral College and pro-popular vote. Have students research the pros and cons of their positions. Then hold a debate answering this question: Should the U.S. use the Electoral College or the popular vote to elect presidents?

Provide students with a blank map of the U.S. Have them research and tally which states the two main candidates were from for each presidential election. Use these numbers to create a map, such as the one in the article. Then have students write questions modeled after those in the article using their map.