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This website focuses on an aspect of voting that we may not usually talk about with our students, but is arguably extremely important: the mechanics of voting. It takes you through a history of voting technology, from wooden ballot boxes, to gear and lever, to punch cards, to electronic voting. It would be a great way to explore the many influences that decide an election, and to question power in our democracy with students.

I think you are right. Middle schoolers, particularly, will be interested to know exactly how voting technology has developed.

This is a great site that offers kid-firendly information about voting and voting rights.  It is interactive with timelines, history, ways to get involved and personal stories.

A printable PDF timeline of voting rights from the Northern California Citizenship Project's Mobilize the Immigrant Vote 2004 Capacity Building Series. Formatted in a very readable graphic organizer that can be cut and pasted as part of a larger visual timeline project, or simply as a reading resource. Timeline entry summaries are concise yet cogent and range from 1776 to 2002. It could be interesting to have students conduct research to fill in the gap from 2002 to present.

A great resource that chronicles policies and events related to the subject of voting rights.

Rock the Vote, a movement to encourage young people to vote, provides a wealth of resources, in young person friendly language, about the importance of voting and how to register.

This City University of New York page explores the history of Puerto Ricans in relation to US citizenship and the right to vote.

This page includes a range of posts supporting "yes" and "no" views on whether kids should have the right to vote. Teachers could use the page as supplemental reading for a Voting Rights lesson, as a scaffold to a whole-class debate, or as a model for creating a class blog where students can debate the topic.

I referenced this site back when we were studying the expansion of voting rights. I found this page helpful in particular for learning more about the role women played in passing the Fourteenth Amendment, even though it did not give them the vote. This site in general also has a lot of useful information and suggestions.

Great audio recordings on the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 - they are somewhat hard to hear, but they provide a behind the scenes look on how they passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Students could listen to them and get a sense on how deals are presented, made and discussed behind closed doors.

Simple, elegant timeline of major voting events in US history. This would be a great review for students studying the evolution of voting in the United States. It does not get bogged down in the details.

I like that you, as the teacher, can pick and choose the events you want to include, given your student population.

This site would be useful for high school students exploring the rights of felons to vote. It compares different state laws. The sidebar options would help set up students to debate the issue.

This is a great site for younger students to gain some knowledge about voting rights in this country. Its very easy to navigate, kid friendly and presents brief amounts of text on each page. 3rd-5th graders would find this a helpful introduction to voting rights.

I went searching for a useful article on the Shelby County v. Holder decision. I wanted to supplement the material provided in the Middle School Lesson for this week, which covered a history of voting rights in America. The materials did not go so far as to include this recent development, which arguable disenfranchised a large portion of Americans. I would read this article with the students and then add a character for "period 4" in the lesson who, students would realize, may be disenfranchised by this 2013 Supreme Court decision.

And make sure students realize the close proximity in date of this article and story. This is as current as it gets.

This was from the link in the high school lesson plan, which now works. The item labeled "The Split over Suffrage" has what looks to be a very interesting lesson for the Reconstruction period

The split between Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony is an interesting topic for high school students who can differentiate between the nuances of belief systems among these players.

I don't think I need to write a description for this. It could be useful in engaging soon to be young voters on the importance of active citizenship through voting.

I initially had trouble finding the lesson linked to in week 5's session. I searched the website for the title of the lesson mentioned on the syllabus. This is the lesson that came up in my search.

This chart shows how many electoral votes each state had between 1981-90, 91-2000, and 2001-10. Could be useful when teaching contemporary elections - and could be particularly helpful when looking at demographic patterns - inferences galore to be made!

Here is a nice opinion piece by the NYT regarding the Electoral College: http://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000001821730/electoral-college-101.html?ref=electoralcollege

Albert, I loved this article and the trailer. The best quote from the trailer is the last line: Interviewer: What is democracy? Kid: It's a type of ... disease.

I love this game about the Constitutional Convention. It has lots of great videos for students to watch that are entertaining and clearly explain what was going on. Kids go through representing one state and vote on parts on the constitutional convention and then they see how each state actually voted. Some of the links are broken, but most work well. The game takes a while - at least 45 minutes (and is maybe a little too long), but I think kids would be engaged and would walk away with a great base understanding of how the Constitutional Convention went and what it was like to be there.

This video is straightforward and fascinating, helping to explain issues of apportionment. It really emphasizes the complexity faced by the Supreme Court in trying to interpret and understand the Constitution.

The prompt this week for the ACLU link had to do with how we might use timelines in class to explore voting rights, and that reminded me of this wonderful websites. It allows you to create your own dynamic timeline for students to explore, and it also allows students to create their own timelines. It's easy to use and visually very friendly.

The New York Times has a great map section for the Electoral College. If you type in Electoral Map in the search bar of the New York Times it will be give you various maps of the past few elections (presidential, midterm, governors, etc.). A great visual for students to understand voting patterns, etc.