About This Lesson
Gerrymandering is an abstract and complex topic, but it's an important one to cover. Game-based learning is one way that you can make this topic more approachable and concrete.
Mapmaker: the Gerrymandering Game is great for this purpose. Read this review of Mapmaker: the Gerrymandering Game to learn more about the game.
You can use the game in your class in a number of ways.
The game includes a solo play version, in which the object is to create a lop-sided map which favors one political party over another. You could assign your students the task of creating a map that favors one political party and then reflect on the techniques they used to do it.
You could also have them play a regular game of Mapmaker with four players. After they are done, they can reflect on how strategies like packing and cracking voters allowed them to manipulate the map.
Finally, you can have them play the game with the voter tokens upside down. This way, they won't know where the voters are. This will help them understand proposed reforms to eliminate gerrymandering, since it's impossible to do so if you don't know where voters live.
Those are three ways that you can have your students play Mapmaker in class to learn about gerrymandering. Whichever method you choose, you should pair it with a quick introductory lecture that explains what gerrymandering is and how the game is played. You should also follow up with a written reflection on the experience.
