Lesson: Biography Interviews
Target Age: Grades 3-4
Objectives: Students will use biographies as a model to design and conduct peer interviews. Students will use a classmate's interview to write a mini-biography.
Background: Throughout 2nd and 3rd grade students study famous Americans through reading biographies about them. They learn about the structure and components that make up a biography.
Procedure:
1. Have students create a list of ten questions they would ask if they were going to write their own biography.
2. In partners have students ask each other their questions while recording using audacity .
3. Students can enhance the audio clip of the interviews they conduct by adding music and an introduction.
4. All of the interviews will be posted as podcasts to the class web page.
Follow Up:
Each student will write a mini biography of one student. They will chose someone other than the person they interviewed to write about.
Assessment:
Each individual will be assessed on using the audio clip accurately, quality of their interview questions, and ability to use the information they listened to and apply it to a biography format.
Asking students to create podcasts as a product express their understanding of content, is a great authentic task. NPR had podcasts of all kinds of famous Americans. So students get to play the role of writer, producer, and actor.
ReplyDeleteTransforming these students into these roles shows them that what they are learning is relevant in real life.
However, a podcast is only as good as its design plan. In real life, developing a product such as this is a complex production. Teaching students this design process provides them opportunities for learning beyond the content.
What steps would you add to this project to reflect good design practices and principles?