OBJECTIVE
Students put together a page consisting of pictures and promises made by the candidates running for office.

MATERIALS
Meet the Candidates handout, scissors, glue

• Divide your students into pairs.
• Duplicate one copy of the Meet the Candidates handout for each pair of students.
• Collect, or have your students collect, local campaign literature and several recent issues of the local newspapers.
• Prepare scissors and glue for each pair of classmates.

• Tell the pairs to look for a photograph of each candidate in an election and to also look for articles about the candidates' campaigns.
• Ask your students to watch the news and listen for promises that the candidates make. Give an example: John Jones says that he will bring new businesses to our town.
• Give students time to work on the Meet the Candidates handout the next day and possibly at home. (Students could alternatively work on this project in small groups.)

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• What promises have been made by the candidates? (Continue until you have reviewed all the candidates.)
• Which promises seem most important to you? How do campaign promises help you decide how to vote?
• Is there one candidate whose picture appears more often than the others? Do you think he/she is winning right now? Do you think the pictures are giving him/her an advantage?
• What can we do if politicians do not keep their campaign promises?

• Continue to collect campaign pictures and put them up on a bulletin board with the Meet the Candidates papers.
• Bring up the concept of promises in other contexts: books the students read, classroom rules, etc.