Election 2011!

Before morning recess, we had Family Bins. - Braylin
Logan is the only Grade 3 student in the Frisky Foxes family group. - Robyn
We had 2 free times in the Gym. -Tyler
We earned 5 marbles today. - Joey
We wrote for 11 minutes in our journals for the Daily 5. - Marie
Today in Social Studies, we voted for the election. - Jenna

During our election, when Mr. Hoeppner was counting the ballots, the NDP beat the PC's by 11-5. - Dylan
The Green Party had 3 votes and the Liberals had 3 votes. - Lexi
This afternoon, we had our own mini-election. The NDP had 11 votes, and whenever the NDP got another vote, people went "WOO!" - Sydney
Today in our mini-election, it was really fun. The NDP won the whole thing. - Cam H.

With the Manitoba provincial election taking place tomorrow, I thought it was the perfect time for our class to learn about what all the hubbub was about. We've been talking about rights and responsibilities in Social Studies, and voting in elections just happens to be a major responsibility of being a citizen of Canada. We talked about how the province was divided up into different ridings (and found out the Joey's aunt is running for the Liberal party in Transcona - cool!), and how voting actually works. Then we talked about the different political parties, and what each of them stood for. Next, we watched some of the TV ads that the different parties have been running over the last few weeks, and noted how some of them were really negative towards other parties, while other ads were really positive about their own party. Finally, we had our own election, where the students voted for the party of their choice. As you saw from some of the students comments at the beginning of the post, the NDP won in the riding of Radisson Room 18 - we'll have to wait until tomorrow night to see who wins the 2011 provincial election!

This is what our ballots looked like:

There was a long line-up at the poll in Room 18 today:

A student carefully considers who he will cast his ballot for (don't worry.... he waited until the photographer left the polling booth before casting his vote!):