Of course once I actually read through their stories, I was humbled by what they had to conquer to get where they wanted to be. As a culminating project for this unit, I wanted to really test my students knowledge on character traits that should be connected to heroes. I came up with the idea of giving a hero award. Students had to pick one of the three above people, and come up with 3 character traits that contribute to their hero status. I taught a mini lesson on human characteristics and how to determine good ones verse bad ones.
For my example I used Abraham Lincoln. I read the "Abe's Honest Words" (seriously amazing book) and then showed my hero certificate that I created for Abe.
I called my kiddos the "Hero Hunters" and sent them out on their own to come up with their awards.
(please excuse the "pre-blog" picture taking. I don't have any up close pics. I am going to hunt through my papers and see if I can find the class book I made and then I will update this post)
I was seriously blown away by how amazing they turned out. That's when you know you did a good job teaching a skill, when the student work is just absolutely awesome & all you want to do is BRAG about it to everyone that will listen!
This is the bulletin board I put up to showcase their certificates. I used the characteristics from the previous activity (I hung those up around the room & had my students go stand next to the characteristic they thought they represented most. I used that as my "hook" and boy did they find it challenging to narrow it down to only one)
I am having such a horrible time getting the certificate to upload to google docs, I think because it was made in publisher. So if you would like a copy, please email me & I can send it out...I hope :)
