1st Grade Presidential Research

As the librarian I often find my lessons have to be short; 30 minutes.  I try hard to connect what I teach with what is happening in the classroom.  This past week, after celebrating President's Day, the 1st grade teachers were reading biographies about presidents.  I took the opportunity during their library lesson to teach a bit of research skills and how to find biographies.

The lesson sequence went as follows...
     1.  Introduced lesson with connecting to President's Day and what they were reading in the classroom.
     2.  I read to them a short biography about Abraham Lincoln.  (There was a picture of the penny included in this book.)
     3.  After reading, I went back to the picture of the penny and told them when I read this book it made me think of how when I look at money there are faces of important men on each one.
     4.  I showed them a picture of money on a PowerPoint.  There were both the bills and on the second slide the coins.

     5.  We talked about how most people think all these men are past presidents. People assume that just because their faces are on money, they must be a past president.  I tell them two of these men were not a president.
     6.  I then step them through the process of how to locate a biography in a student encyclopedia set.  I took a picture of the actual page and had it on the PowerPoint as well.  We practiced scanning for the word president, then stopped and read the sentence we found it in.  We then added that person's name to the chart.  We did 3 of these people together.  I was sure to choose one of the men that was not a president, so they could see they had to scan the whole article.

     7.  At this point, I divided the class into two groups.  One group went with the teacher to show them the biography section and explain how to locate books in this section.  I provided the teacher with sentence strips of names of people I knew I had books on, a dry erase board and marker.  The second group sat with me on the floor using the student encyclopedias.  Each partnership got a card with one of the men's name on it.  We went over how to find the article using guide words and practiced scanning articles.  This was really hands on to where I could reach and help all students.

     8.  At the end we gathered back and shared what we found.  I encouraged them to go home and ask their parents if they knew which two men that have their faces appear on money were not presidents.