As Americans Make History This Year

The theme of this year's CATESOL State Conference was "Growing Democracy." One way to grow democracy in the ESL classroom is to find content that teaches about democracy. What better year than this one when the presidential election processes offer no shortage of appropriate content online for us to deliver instruction on democracy. As the first would-be African-American president and the first would-be woman vice president compete on their road to the White House (or the Old Naval Observatory for the VP, to be exact), ESL students have an exciting opportunity to get involved by learning about and/or participating in the elections in the months that follow.

Lucky for us, plenty of teaching and learning resources are available on the Internet. Jim Brice of the San Diego Community College District just sent a message to CATESOL's "tell-ig" listserv with several websites:

http://www.brainpop.com/socialstudies/ushistory/presidentialelection/ (This explains the presidential election process in America in a cartoon-like video clip.)

http://fpc.state.gov/c9823.htm (This is a State Department's website with elections trivia.)

http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/indepth/election2008/games/candidates_stand/issues.htm (This is a Scholastic News website showing where the two major presidential candidates stand on several important issues.)

This handout prepared by Jim is particularly good for teaching synthesis.

http://www.c-spanclassroom.org/ (More suitable for advanced students, this C-SPAN Classroom site, which requires a free registration, offers campaign clips of the week, among other election resources.)

Beyond the issues, I've also found this Parade article that analyzes 10 qualities of great presidents to be well written and a good resource for teaching evaluation and other critical thinking skills to advanced students: http://www.parade.com/hot-topics/2008/09/secrets-of-great-presidents.