The project uses role play to engage the children as residents of a village/town in which they are also councillors. Acting in role, the children learn about decision making and consequences of decisions through a variety of exciting Literacy, Geography and PSHE learning activities. The topic concludes with looking at the real world of local politics and planning ways in which to persuade more people to vote at local level.
This pack aims to cover a significant number of Literacy objectives. In trials we have found the activities to be very effective in engaging children, especially in the upper primary phase. The more cross-curricular the approach, the more effective the project will be and the pack is designed to facilitate that. PRIMARY VOTE aims to excite and motivate children. It stimulates their interest in an imaginary town in which all the class live. This will enable them to consider several “real-life” scenarios in an engaging and creative way.
Derby Primary Vote provides a themed week of curricular activities with the following aims: -

To create a strong level of interest in democracy in primary children that will pay dividends in future years
To use the natural enthusiasm of children to promote democratic engagement to their parents and social networks
To provide attractive material for the media in order to communicate the message about voting in local elections to an even wider audience

Click here for National Curriculum objectives
The resources currently on the site are intended for Years 5 and 6 although it could easily be adapted for use in Years 3 and 4 or Key Stage 3.

Subject to further interest, additional resources for Years 3 and 4 will be added in due course. These will be available free of charge to all primary schools within the Derby City area.
The project could be focussed over one week where the class takes “democracy” as its theme. It would be easy to adapt the plans to use the material in a longer term planning framework too. Word versions of the planning grids can be downloaded from our password-protected Resources section. This allows teachers to adapt the plans for their own children and school planning frameworks.
Resources for each unit are detailed in the lesson plans and can be found here. To maximise impact it is recommended that you provide a separate folder for all the week's work. This will make it seem more important to the children.
We hope you enjoy using this pack and that it is useful. However, everything can be improved. Please use our contact form to email questions, comments and suggestions to us. Amendments can be made to web based files immediately.