Graphically organize a biography

This lesson is a good ending to a unit on biographies. The students will work together in small groups to create a poster that displays the information from a biography in a graphic organizer.

A lesson plan for grade 3 Information Skills and Social Studies

By Ellen Benton

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Related pages

• The not-so-famous person report: Instead of teaching the history of the famous, use research in primary sources to teach students that the past and present were made by people like them.
• Strategy lesson: KWL: This lesson activates students' prior knowledge about famous North Carolinians and helps them organize thoughts and questions before they read biographies.
• Formulating questions to meet information needs of ELL students: This is a multi-activity lesson plan to teach the concept of asking engaging, researchable questions prior to reading. This leads to effective inquiries during project or research work in any content area. Using engaging questions creates a sense of connectedness by linking academic contents with students' personal concerns. The lesson is primarily designed for English language learners although it can be adapted for mainstream students. This lesson can also be modified for use with grades 4-8.

Related topics

• Learn more about biographies, citizenship, community members, graphic organizers, information literacy, leaders, and social studies.

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Learning outcomes

Students will

• read and take notes from a biography.
• write a paragraph from notes.
• create a graphic organizer to display paragraphs.

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

3 Hours

Materials/resources

• short biographies, focus on civic leaders
• poster board
• markers
• glue
• construction paper
• scissors

Pre-activities

Students need some knowledge of biographies. They should be able to take notes from reading and write a paragraph from notes. Students should be familiar with graphic organizers.

Activities

1. Assign students to groups of 4.
2. Students choose one of 4 topics related to a famous person about which to take notes:
   
   • childhood
   • adulthood
   • accomplishments
   • character traits
3. Provide students with a short biography. Try to choose biographies of people that your students may not be familiar with, such as Mother Teresa, George Washington Carver, or Sandra Day O’Connor.
4. The group reads the biography aloud to each other in round-robin fashion. Each student takes notes from the biography for his/her topic.
5. After completing the biography, students write a paragraph from their notes about their topic.
6. The group chooses a symbol that is appropriate for the person about which they read; for example, an apple for Johnny Appleseed or a light bulb for Thomas Edison.
7. Provide each group with a poster board, construction paper, markers, and scissors.
8. Students cut out 4 large symbols for their poster. They mount their paragraphs on the symbols labeling each Childhood, Adulthood, Accomplishments, and Character Traits.
9. The group writes the researched person’s name in the center of the poster and glues the symbols on the poster.
10. Students present their group projects to the class.

Assessment

The projects may be graded using a Rubric

Supplemental information

Here is an example of a final product.