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Exercises and worksheets for highschool students.

New Zealand curriculum framework

How to use the worksheets

Worksheet contents

How to participate

Worksheet 1: Voting for your Member of Parliament

Role-Playing Elections/Electoral Campaigns/
Electoral Procedure - How the system works

  • Level 5: Participating in political process.
  • Level 6: Making choices about governing.
Find pictures of four people. Suggest one topic each of them might be concerned
about in your school and neighbourhood.

Role-playing inside the classroom: MMP

There are two kinds of Members of Parliament under the MMP voting system – Party List MPs and Electorate MPs.

  1. (20 min) Divide into groups of 3 - 4 students. Choose one person to act as your group's 'electorate candidate'. As a group, prepare a two-minute campaign speech about one or more local issues raised by the people in the pictures you picked.
  2. (20 min) Choose a Chairperson (possibly the teacher). Present your campaign speech to the class.
  3. (10 min) Set up a voting box with a Supervisor. Hand out voting papers with names of the candidates listed and instructions about voting procedure. Vote in a secret ballot for the person in your class to be your electorate MP. The Supervisor counts the votes and announces the result.
  4. (5 min) Class discussion about voting procedure. Did everyone participate? If not, why not?
  5. Plan how you could get your electorate MP to become a member of the 'government' give example.

Information about the MMP system is available from the Electoral Commission.

For further reference
See also:

Checks & balances
Electing parliament
Who's who in Parliament 


 
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