5th Grade Henrico Election Posters

Fifth graders at Trevvett Elementary have been learning about Henrico county government (HC.2) in Social Studies, and they’ve been identifying the main idea and summarizing nonfiction text in Language Arts (SOL5.6d,e). Since elections are coming up in November, students in Ms. Harris’s class and Ms. Brown’s class conducted research to find information about the candidates running for office in Henrico County. Then we summarized our findings to create campaign posters. First, we used this site to see the list of candidates. Each student chose a candidate they weren’t familiar with since many of them already had a family favorite, and I wanted them to be exposed to different viewpoints. Next, they did a Google search for their candidate and explored their campaign website. I showed them where to look to find the “Beliefs” or “Issues” sections. After the students read some of their viewspoints, we discussed ways to summarize their views into a couple of sentences for the campaign poster. Students could use Google Docs, Google Slides, or Google Drawings (as well as other tools like DesignCap) to make posters, but we chose to use Google Drawings since we hadn’t used that tool yet. For the poster’s background, we added a square shape, made it as large as the poster, and changed the fill color so it was a solid color or gradient. Then we clicked “Insert > Word Art” and typed the candidate’s name. I showed them how to change the font, fill, and outline color of the text. We imported a photo of the candidate using the Google image search feature. Finally, we added a speech bubble with the Shapes button and typed a summary of the candidate’s beliefs. We shared our campaign posters on Schoology, but you can see them all here.