Grade 8 Humanities - Historical Biography

Students in grade 8 LA are creating a biography of a historical figure. In this project students picked a significant person in history and learn about their life and explore how their lives affected the culture of the world.

Students respond to questions like

Biographies will contain the following Information:

• Date and place of birth and death
• Family information
• Lifetime accomplishments, challenges
• Major events in life
• Effects/impact on society, historical significance

Students were asked to think about their historical figure and analyze the following types of questions

Using CHATTERPIX, students can respond to two of the following questions in first person:

• Was there something in  your subject's childhood that shaped his/her personality?
• Was there a personality trait that drove him/her to succeed or impeded his progress?
• What adjectives would you use to describe him/her?
• What were some turning points in this life?
• Did he or she overcome any obstacles? Take risks?
• Would the world be better or worse if this person hadn't lived? How and why?

Students also created a TWITTER profile based on their historical figure and sent tweets as if Twitter existed during that time.

• Fill in the template with their profile 
• Create 5 - 10 tweets with Hash-Tags (#'s) of important events in their life
• You will have to follow the rules of twitter and only have 140 characters per tweet

Here is an example from Tavian. His historical figure is Alexander the Great.