We will plan several activities to familiarize the students with Annie Oakley - the activities will incorporate research skills, while being both interactive and fun.
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OBJECTIVES:
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1. Students will be able to complete a research project using the Big Six skills.
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2. Students will learn note-taking skills.
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3. Students will prepare a graphic organizer.
ACTIVITY # 1 - Game show
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1. The first activity is actually the last and needs to be preceded by activities 2 and 3. It will involve setting up a “To tell the truth” type of panel. Three students will sit at the front of the room. Each will pretend to be Annie Oakley and will make an opening statement that would be true, i.e., “I am Annie Oakley, I grew up in Darke County.” or “I am Annie Oakley, I was adopted by Sitting Bull.” Only one student will be the ‘Real” Annie. The others will be “impostors.”
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2. The class will then take turns asking facts of each of the three panelists. The interviewers should also prepare some trick questions. The three panelists will respond to each, giving what they think is the correct answer. In some cases they will be expected to bluff the response. (Prior to this point, the students should be shown the difference between the terms “poker face” and “bluff.”) The interviewers are also instructed to show no reaction to the answers.
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3. At the end of the “show,” 20 minutes or so, the interviewers will hold up cards with the numbers, 1, 2 or 3, signifying who they suspect is the “real” Annie. The same procedure could be followed for another “episode” featuring Buffalo Bill.”
Although this seems like a fun activity, it places the burden of research on the students. Using books and articles that are consistent with the information given, students will be exposed to research and fact checking skills. They will all have the same information so that everyone will have the chance to know the correct answers.
No one will be writing a report but students will need to isolate their facts. Guidance will be given, i.e., whom did she marry, why was Sitting Bull famous, what was Annie’s nickname, who gave it to her, etc.
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Because they are searching for facts, this activity will be preceded by a lesson in note-taking.
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ACTIVITY #2 - NOTE-TAKING
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1. This lesson will incorporate the Big Six skills. First we will discuss what the assignment is and what the students responsibilities are. We will talk about the type of information they will need to accomplish their task and where they will find it. We will about the sources they will use and where they will find them. So that everyone will have the same information, we will confine the sources to a few - often biographies differ on details like date of birth, etc.
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2. The class will be given some paragraphs about Buffalo Bill. They will then be given a set of questions that they need to answer about him, i.e., where was he born, what was his real name. They will be instructed to draw a circle around the words that provide the necessary information and to draw a line through the rest.. They will then use the circled words to organize and synthesize a short biography about Buffalo Bill.
ACTIVITY #3 - RESEARCH
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1. Once the students have found the sources, they will need to extract the necessary data, using the indexes. They will then synthesize the information by forming questions. In this case , they will also need to falsify some of the data in order to try to trip up the contestants.
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2. Evaluation will be the success of the “show.”
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3. A similar activity could also be acted out with the stimulation of a talk show featuring such past luminaries as Annie Oakley and other members of the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show, i.e.., Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull, some cowboys and some Indians. Once again, the research and note-taking skills outlined above could be utilized with everyone taking on the title of “researcher.”
SAMPLE LESSON PLAN # 3: - HARRIET TUBMAN
OBJECTIVE:
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1. Students will learn about the Underground Railroad through a series of activities.
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2. By using the research and note-taking skills outlined in Sample Lesson Plan #2, the students will be able to create a quilt of their own.
ACTIVITIES:
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1. First, they will be shown the films Brittany meets Harriet Tubman and Harriet Tubman, and then will share the book Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt.
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2. Next, they will research the “stops” on the Underground Railroad and draw representations of them, as was done in the book. They will be encouraged to draw pictures of the states that carried Harriet to freedom as well as major rivers and obstacles.
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3. The pictures can be then transferred to blocks of material and stitched into a quilt that can be saved and put on display.
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NOTES:
1. McDonald, Archie, ed. Shooting Stars; heroes and heroines of Western film. Bloomington Indiana: Bloomington Press, 1987.
Sandra Kay Schackel: “Women in western films: the civilizer, the saloon singer, and their modern sister. p. 196-215.
2. Eisenberg, Michael B. and Bob Berkowitz. Information Problem-solving: the big six skills approach to library and information skills instruction. Norwood, NJ: Alex Publishing Corp., 1990.
3. Rosenstone, Robert A. Visions of the past: the challenge of film to our idea of history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995., p. 72.
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