Teacher’s Talk LawNow – Creating Election Infographics

LawNow magazine is an incredible resource for teachers. Each issue offers engaging articles about law in language suitable for students. Teachers Talk LawNow is a series of lesson plans for teachers based on these articles.

Infographics are an effective way to distill complex information into visually appealing, concise, and memorable pieces of art. They can be used by teachers to help their students visualize abstract concepts and large amounts of information. When I was a Social Studies teacher I used an infographic about multinational corporations to teach my students about globalization.

Creating infographics fits the inquiry model of learning perfectly. To make a good infographic students must gather information and organize it. They create visual representations of their understanding, share it with their class, and self-evaluate. Most importantly, it’s fun to do!

There is a plethora of LawNow articles that lend themselves well to the infographic format, but the article “American and Canadian Election Laws: Top 10 Differences” is a particularly good fit. Below is an activity for Social Studies teachers to use this article in their classroom.

Canadian vs. American Elections Infographic Activity

1. Before the lesson begins, search for example infographics that will appeal to your students. A collection of interesting examples can be found here. If you can’t find what exactly what you’re looking for a quick image search will uncover an endless supply of infographics.
2. With you students review what an infographic is and highlight what makes a good one. As a class look at examples and create a checklist for making a first-class infographic. Students can use this checklist to evaluate their own work as they go.
3. Place your students into small groups and give them the task of creating an infographic to explain the differences between Canadian and American elections. Provide each student a copy of the article American and Canadian election Laws: Top 10 Differences to help them plan their infographic.
4. To design their infographics, students can choose to use free online tools like Prezi, free software like GIMP, or art supplies and paper.
5. The finished infographics can be displayed on a bulletin board or class blog. LawNow would love to see them too! Send a copy to us so that we can share them on our blog for our readers to enjoy.