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Biography Day/Wax
Museum
During
our literature study of biographies, each student in my
class got to choose a historical or currently famous
person that they could research and read a biography
about. I teamed my students up with another teacher's
class, and the students wrote "pen pal" letters to each
other from their historical person's perspective. There
were two letters. The first letter told about their life
and accomplishments, and the second letter told about
the time period that the person lived in, including
technology, clothing, cars, music, etc...I had my
students research at home and write the letters in
school this year. Last year, I had the entire project
done at home. You can do it however you want!
After
the two letters have been exchanged, to culminate our
unit, we held a Biography Day Celebration! The students
got to dress up as their researched person. The first
part of this celebration was the autograph book signing
party, where students got autographs of the "famous"
people in the room (but not until they each told three
facts about each other were they able to get a
signature!)
The
second part of the celebration was where the pen pals
got to find each other and do a special interview with
them.
Finally, we line the students up and they strike a pose
as a "wax statue" as parents walk through our "museum".
The parents love it, and so do the kids! However,
staying in a pose for 20 minutes is extremely hard on
the kids, and practice is needed daily in order to build
up to it!
Mind
Portraits
This
approach is from a book entitled Critical Literacy. It's
getting children to think about books and characters
from different perspectives. Basically, children take
two opposing characters in a fiction book, or two
opposing opinions in a non-fiction book and they make
the posters you see below. Inside of the heads, are
phrases and thoughts of the two contradicting characters
or opinions. On the very bottom, they must write the
perspective of each character and see how it compares to
the other.
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