Political Ads/Commercials by Mrs. Surls

Students in Mrs. Surls’ class have been studying a time in history referred to as “The Age of Jackson.”  During this time era, one of the topics studied was the election of 1828 between the candidates Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams.  As a culminating activity, students were asked to create a 1 minute political ad/commercial in support of the candidate assigned to them.  To begin, we watched several examples of political ads/commercials from past elections using the website livingroomcandidate.org.  Students needed to see other examples from past elections where ads had been more positive and less controversial.  They began research to gather their facts, and then turned those facts into a script for their ad/commercial. There were various resources provided in a Nearpod presentation, but students could also find their own resources as well.  Students were asked to include 5 reasons to support why people should vote for their candidate and 3 reasons why people should not vote for the opposing candidate.  Once their research and script were complete, they used iMovie to create their ad/commercial.  Students were to include images and pictures that were historically correct, and background music if they wanted.  They could choose to add in their own voices or having a rolling script throughout the ad/commercial.  

Students worked with a partner on this project, which made for highly engaged collaboration. Partners do make it difficult with absent students, so next year, I will allow them to collaborate with one another, however, each student will create their own ad/commercial instead of creating one together.

With this year being a presidential election year, students really enjoyed watching the ads/commercials from previous elections.  I did show them one ad from the current election, however, they were to create one that would have been appropriate for the 1828 election, which forced them to keep their ad/commercial historically correct.

I also created a module within Canvas to make it easier for students to submit all three components of the project.  Students also completed open-ended questions in a Nearpod presentation to provide feedback on the overall project.  At the end of the week, each class previewed several iMovies created by their peers.

I also want to add that I co-taught this activity with Mr. Hoskins.  He was part of the brainstorming/planning process, very helpful with finding credible resources, and available on a daily basis to assist within my classroom helping students use iMovie.