Voting: choosing your parliamentary representatives - unit of work

Text Voting: choosing your parliamentary representatives - unit of work

TLF ID M009440

This is a unit of work about the democratic process of voting to elect representatives. The unit includes four main activities in which students in groups work through scenarios where decisions are required and representatives need to be chosen. The groups also research and discuss concepts including secret ballot, compulsory voting, absolute majority and preferential voting, as well as taking part in a House of Representatives-style preferential vote. The unit is intended for the upper primary years and includes five sets of scenarios and student worksheets.

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Educational details

Educational value
  • This is a valuable resource for the civics and citizenship curriculum area. Understanding and being able to describe the general processes involved in elections is important for students to have achieved by the end of primary school. This unit aims to ensure that students can differentiate between different decision-making processes and voting systems, particularly between first-past-the-post and preferential voting systems.
  • The unit's suggested activities are challenging but appropriate for the intended learners in upper primary. They include categorising different types of decisions, discussing the fairness of decision-making methods, using a graphic organiser for arguments for and against compulsory voting and analysing election results for their House of Representatives electorate. Several sets of prompt questions for the teacher are also provided.
Topics Voting Lower house
Learning area
  • Civics and citizenship

Other details

Contributors
  • Contributor
  • Name: The Department of Education\, Employment and Workplace Relations (DE
  • Organization: The Department of Education\, Employment and Workplace Relations (DE
  • Description: content provider
  • Address: ACT, AUSTRALIA
  • URL: http://www.deewr.gov.au
  • Copyright Holder
  • Name: Commonwealth of Australia
  • Organization: Commonwealth of Australia
  • Address: ACT, AUSTRALIA
  • Publisher
  • Name: Education Services Australia Ltd
  • Organization: Education Services Australia Ltd
  • Description: Publisher
  • Address: VIC, AUSTRALIA
  • URL: http://www.esa.edu.au/
  • Resource metadata contributed by
  • Name: Education Services Australia Ltd
  • Organisation: Education Services Australia Ltd
  • Address: AUSTRALIA
  • URL: www.esa.edu.au
Access profile
  • Generic
Learning Resource Type
  • Text
Rights
  • © Commonwealth of Australia 2009. With the exception of the Commonwealth Coat of Arms and the DEEWR logo and copyright material that is owned by third parties, you may use the material in accordance with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC BY-SA) 3.0 Australia licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/au/ provided that appropriate acknowledgement is made, the material is not subjected to derogatory treatment and any derivative work attributes the original material and identifies the changes that have been made to it.