Biography+Project+Lesson+Plan

Objective: Students will research someone who has been influential to world history, write and publish a biography using Story Bird, and complete one of the projects of choice to share with their classmates.

AL ELS Course of Study Standards: 3.12. Demonstrate retrieval skills needed to research a topic.

3.4. Use a wide range of strategies and skills, including retelling information, using context clues, and making inferences to identify main idea, to comprehend third-grade informational and functional reading materials.

ISTE NETS Standards:
 * **2.** || **Communication and Collaboration** ||
 * || Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students: ||
 * || || a. || interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media. ||
 * b. || communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats. ||
 * c. || develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures. ||
 * d. || contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems. || ||
 * **3.** || **Research and Information Fluency** ||
 * || Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information. Students: ||
 * || || a. || plan strategies to guide inquiry. ||
 * b. || locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media. ||
 * c. || evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks. ||
 * d. || process data and report results. || ||

Essential Questions to guide creation of project: How has your person influenced our lives today? How did their contributions change their own society? What impact has this person had globally? Duration of project: 45-60 minutes a day/ 5 days for Biography portion and another 45-60 minutes a day/5 days for presentation project portion

The teacher will:
 * 1) Introduce the project to the students and go over the rubrics for assessment (Rubric based on Bloom's Digital taxomony, Completed Biography, and Presentation project of choice)
 * 2) Group students into collaborative teams based on person they chose, two from homeroom and two from cooperating class. Project Managers and Assistant Managers will be assigned.
 * 3) Remind students of proper nettiquette and digital citizenship issues.
 * 4) Provide students paper with checklist for project to keep them focused and on-task.
 * 5) Show students where to find Google Docs that provide graphic organizers that will assist with Biograpy portion of assignment.
 * 6) Make sure everyone is set up into groups with wikispaces for sharing ideas across classrooms.
 * 7) Let the students know that all finished assignments will be posted into Edmodo and show them the calendar with the deadlines.
 * 8) Allow students time to research.

Students will be given 5 class periods to complete their research and biography portion of the project. They will then choose from the following list and create a presentation to share with the rest of the group.
 * Make a movie of the person- could be a monologue, song, interview, short play of person's life, etc.
 * Create an Animoto- pictures and music that represent who the person was and/or what they did
 * Make a wesite that gives information about the person
 * Use Skype to interview an expert on that person- could be a history professor, author of a biography of that person, etc.
 * Use Prezi to create a PowerPoint presentation of the person's life

Assessment: Students will be assessed using the three rubrics listed above for each piece of the project.

Accommodations: Students who function at a lower level will be grouped with at least two mid to higher level students. Students with reading difficulties will be given some auditory options for research such as videos, read aloud ebooks, books on CD, etc.


 * 1) fcc10_choice