Famous Americans

Name: Diane Willsey Date: March 2011
Class: 5th Grade Lesson Name: Famous Americans

Anticipatory Set:
Fifth Grade objectives include the study of American History. History is people. Brainstorm a list of famous Americans and why the students might find these people interesting.

Behavioral Objective:
1. Students will research a famous American using the library, books, research materials, and the internet.
2. Students will write a research paper on their famous American.
3. Students will dress up as their famous American and present a 30 speech for a “living museum” attended by other students in our school.
4. Students will video tape their presentations using a “green screen” to give appropriate background for their famous Americans.
5. Students will prepare a video of another class on campus “visiting” their famous Americans to include younger students in the experience.

Procedure and Student Activities:
1. After the brainstorming session, students will choose a famous American to research.
2. Library and computer time will be given for research. A graphic organizer will be used to keep notes.
3. Digital Citizenship will be encouraged with a mini-lesson and handout regarding plagiarism and appropriate research sites.
4. Students will receive information on correct bibliography form and practice using it.
5. Students will prepare a first draft and then a final, revised draft of their paper.
6. These papers will be combined to produce a class book of Famous Americans.
7. Students will then work on a costume for their famous American and prepare their speech.
8. Other students will be invited to come to see the “Living Museum.”
9. Students will find an appropriate background for the green screen for their video.
10. Each student will perform their speech for the video in front of the green screen. (This step can be eliminated or improvised using posters or other art work made by the students.)
11. A group of students will combine the video and green screen images using the classroom projector to help teach everyone in the class the process.
12. The finished video will be shown to other classes to encourage them to work with us on another video including more students. These students will “visit” with the famous American and become part of a new video.

Materials:
1. Graphic Organizer for research paper
2. Bibliography sheet for examples
3. Library resources
4. Computers/Internet
5. Materials for costumes (from home)
6. Video camera (we have this)
7. Green Screen (we have this)
8. Video software to combine the video and green screen (we have this)

Closure: The final videos will be placed in our school library to be used in future years and shared with future students.

Assessment: Students will prepare notes on each famous American from the video and summarize what they know and remember. This will be included in our Famous American Book (the research papers).


Reflection on the lesson: We have actually completed this lesson without the video but are working toward that section now. What we could use is more cameras because as of this point, we only have one and we would like to give more students the opportunity to do filming and use the cameras in other ways.