This unit will last for approximately 8 weeks. The first week will consist of an introduction to the genre of biography as well as a whole group introduction to biographies with a study of a president. The class will listen to a biography of the president as well as be introduced to a profile of the president on PebbleGo.com which is a website many students will be using for research. A graphic organizer will be introduced and a rubric will be created with students so students are aware of what is expected in their final products. During the first week introduction, the teacher will also model with help from students how to choose important and interesting facts to be included in the graphic organizer. Students will also be made aware of the chronological order of biographies and be introduced to using a time line. A time line can also be made for the class to use as a whole noting the lives of the presidents as well as interesting and important events of the times. It will be interesting for students to begin to see what figures lived around the same time and what events they lived through. Students will be expected to:
Read a biography/website on an appropriate reading level.
Extract appropriate and significant information from text.
Use a graphic organizer to record appropriate/significant information about their president.
Place key events in the life of their president in chronological order.
Interpret and apply information about the lives of presidents by reading and asking questions.
Weeks 2 and 3 will be the time when students will be researching their presidents and recording important information onto their graphic organizers. According to their level of independence and/or reading level, students will be working with websites and biographies independently or with teacher assistance. Key questions that students will be asked to contemplate during research are:
What are the characteristics of a biography?
How does asking questions help me to locate information?
How does using a graphic organizer to take notes help me interact with information successfully?
Which events in a person's life are significant or influential?
During week 3 students will also be introduced to what the research paper will look like and some students may begin writing first drafts. During this time the teacher will review the different stages of writing that students will be completing in weeks 4 and 5.
Weeks 4 and 5 will be our time to write our research papers. Students will begin with first drafts and will work through the stages of the writing process including editing and revising with an emphasis on peer conferences as well as teacher conferences in order to get the piece ready for publishing.
Once our pieces have been published, each student will present his or her president to the class. It would be great if there could be an evening performance as well for families. For this presentation, other areas of instruction could be brought in such as art where students may create a poster for their president.
The remaining weeks left in the unit would focus on literature circles where students would be grouped based on time period of their president to read an historical fiction book that takes place when the group's presidents served and/or lived. As an extension students could be paired up and challenged to produce a fictional narrative that incorporates both presidents including conversations and events that might have happened in their lives based on what they know about their figures and the time that they lived
