Democracy Bolsters Love of Reading

First grade students recently orchestrated a community-wide election to determine which character was best at fostering a love of reading. 

Bev “Greenie” Greenberg conducts a unit on voting and elections with her 1st graders every year with support from History teacher Andy Bigelow’s students, who study the same topics on a higher level. To help her students understand the people, processes and things associated with the democratic process, she worked with them to conduct a mock version of an election in which voters choose a children’s book character.

Students first considered which characters they wanted to nominate in their election. With so many avid readers in the group, it was hard to reach a consensus, but in the end, students selected Pigeon, Rocket and Splat the Cat as the three characters who best promoted their love of reading. 

With the candidates identified, Greenie worked with students to consider the reasons why one might vote for each option. First graders explored books from the library that included each character. Greenie collected information based on their ideas in one place for ready reference throughout the election process.

Next, students learned how campaign managers work to influence voters as part of an election. Greenie invited her students to become campaign managers for one of the three characters, which led them to better acquaint themselves with the list of positive attributes they came up with earlier and add more. As part of their responsibilities in this role, students created promotional signage for their characters, hanging the posters around the school with their Big Siblings: Ellis Brown, Miles Johnson and Riana Gehani. Bigelow’s Upper School Elections 2024 class learned about the characters and acted as ballot counters to determine the winner.  

In prior years’ election studies, Greenie set up a permanent polling place outside her classroom for voters to use. This year’s new eight-day school cycle complicated matters, so Greenie evolved this curriculum by building a mobile polling station to ensure they could bring civic action directly to the voters.

For several weeks, Greenie and her class canvassed campus, visiting classrooms in all four divisions and several administrative offices to ensure her voting base was as representative of the school as possible. At each stop, students educated voters on the virtues of their particular candidate, in their role as campaign manager. With the voters well-informed, students “switched hats” and became election officials who provided voters with ballots. They made sure to turn their backs as individuals voted and folded their ballots before escorting each voter when they were ready to cast their vote by putting it in the official ballot box. 

With all the votes cast, Greenie delivered the ballot box to Bigelow so his Elections 2024 students could formally count them and determine the winner. After careful tabulation, Pigeon emerged as the victor with 266 votes to Rocket’s 153 votes, Splat the Cat’s 146 votes and Elephant and Piggie’s single write-in vote.

While Greenie would have liked to offer more community members the opportunity to participate in the election, she was delighted with the ways her students expressed themselves to those they connected with throughout the process. 

Parker commends for the great work by Greenie and her class on this project and Bigelow for supporting the experience by providing vote tabulations from his US students. And congratulations to Pigeon, who makes a difference for kids through his books!

Click here for photos.