Brilliant Biographies

For the last month, we have been reading about amazing people in our reading groups. We had the inquiry question, "What can we learn from amazing people?" Through our biography reading, we have learned about amazing people like Rachael Carson, Ellen Ochoa, Ben Franklin, the Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and more. The students loved to share their biographies with other classmates and their reading made them even more curious about amazing people in history.  Luckily, the children's curiosity, our study of biographies, and Eagle Cliff's third grade hero fair all came together. 

The 3rd grade hero fair actually began our biography study.  The students went to the hero fair armed with clipboards, pencils, and the 5 Ws and a WOW.  They asked the third graders: Who are you?  What did you do?  Where did you live?  When did you live?  Why were you important?  and What is one WOW fact about your life?  The third graders did a great job answering our questions and the students learned a ton!  You should have heard the discussion when the first graders returned.
We used the same 5W's and a WOW when we read our biographies in reading group.  If the children didn't find all the information they needed, they used our online subscription to world book to find more information. The articles in World Book kids and World Book student include kid friendly text, videos, diagrams, and photographs.  See the post below to access this resource at home!

When we finished researching, some students picked one amazing person to write a poem about. The poem was a triangle poem. The first line answered "Who?" with one word. The second line was two words for "When?" and then three words for "Where?" Last, four words to describe "What they did?" and five words for "Why?" The students really had to synthesize the most important information to write the poems.  To publish the poems, we used an app called Legend to make a short video.  We are still working on publishing all the terrific writing.  Students posted the poems to their SeeSaw digital portfolio so the other students could compliment their hard work!