Inspirational Stories
Using Barack Obama's Of Thee I Sing to Motivate Students to Read and Write (Virtual Tour)
Stage of Literacy Development:
Stage 3: Literacy for GrowthAges:
9-12
Grade Range:
4th 5th 6thFood Groups:
Primary: Motivation for Literacy, Writing Processes & Strategies
Secondary: Knowledge Building
Transcript
Character education is really important to me as a teacher and for the kids in the class. And one of the exercises we do is we choose books that help us understand who we are and what our places in the world. For this particular lesson, we looked at the book Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters by Barack Obama. In the book, Barack Obama tells his children about all his childhood heroes and all the people that made really significant contributions to our world. So what we did after we read the book, explored the book and understood who these people were and why they were important we started to talk about who our heroes are. And each of the kids in the class had time to explore online and/or in print, who their heroes are. They each chose a particular person and using the same language that's in written the book, we put together our own version of Of Thee I Sing. Each of the students found a hero, wrote about them, did an illustration. We took all of our illustrations and writing and complied them into our own book. To choose a title for our book, each student submitted a title (if they chose) and we voted on what we thought the title would be. The title that we ended up choosing for our book is The People That Are and Forever Will Be
Related References
Activity Objective
The goal of Inspirational Stories: Using Barack Obama's Of Thee I Sing to Motivate Students to Read and Write (Virtual Tour) is to promote the enjoyment of reading and writing by having students create their own book or inspirational messages.
Quick Tips
Additional Comments:
- Have students write a biography on an inspirational leader.
- Exploring real people and events provides students with meaningful learning experiences.
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