Below is an annotated list of children's literature for the elementary classroom. The books are organized by the Six Elements of Social Justice Curriculum Design (Picower, 2007). It is based on work by pre-service teachers at Montclair State University. They have read and reviewed these books and provided insights into how they can be used in K-5 settings.

Monday, November 23, 2015

Take Social Action and VOTE!




Title: VOTE!
Author and Illustrator: Eileen Christelow
Social Justice Element: #6 Taking Social Action

VOTE! is a how-to book on voting; it talks about what voting is, why, how, what and where you do it. It's a great book for children to get a good first lesson on voting because although it is mainly about political elections, it relates to simpler things to vote on like a family voting on which puppy they want to buy. This makes it a very relatable book for children of young ages.  In the back of the book there is even a glossary, more information about political parties and a timeline on voting. This book represents the 6th element of taking social action because voting is a fantastic approach to taking social action and has quite a bit to do with most things involving taking social action.

Ideally, I would use this book on Election Day in a 2nd or 3rd grade classroom. We would use this book for a read aloud to briefly talk about election day and what is involved in the process. This is a great way to make use of your reading lesson for the day because you can still teach about Election Day without taking away from the content areas. After reading the book we would have a vote on whether we should write a reaction to the story or do vocabulary from the story (from the words in the glossary). 

If you want to learn more about this book and/or purchase it, you can do so here!

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