About This Lesson
Gerrymandering is an important topic in politics, but it's a bit abstract. Most resources for teaching about this issue rely on abstract illustrations of people - colored dots on a grid. While these examples can be illustrative, I also have doubts about how transferrable they are to real live situations.
But you can teach gerrymandering in a much more real and authentic way. Click through and read more about how to teach about gerrymandering with the ReDistricting Game.
The ReDistricting Game is a simulation that allows students to actually do gerrymandering. They are presented with a fictional state populated by fictional people, and they have to draw district boundaries based on a set of criteria. This way, they can actually see how district boundaries are manipulated to increase representation for one party and decrease it for another.
The game provides various scenarios so that students can understand all kinds of gerrymandering - partisan gerrymandering, bipartisan gerrymandering, packing, cracking, etc.
This is one of my favorite activities for an AP U.S. Government and Politics class because it allows the students to really experience an abstract concept. When you can make it work, playing games can really help you teach government in a fun way.
