C-SPAN: American Presidents Life Portraits

Details

Activity Description

 

Preparation

1. Make sure that the site is not blocked at your school and that the videos can be viewed.
2. Preview the video and select the ones you want students to view.
3. View resources about a president by selecting a president in the Pick a President dropdown menu at the top of the page.
4. Prepare a template for students to fill in data about their president.
5. Decide if you want students to work in groups or individually and which presidents you will be highlighting.
6. Prepare a link on your computers, or class Web site so students can easily access the site.

How-To

1. Introduce the Web site to students and demonstrate how to find needed resources for one of the presidents.
2. Pass out the template and explain what is needed.
3. Assign or let students select a president.
4. Give students time to research their president and complete the template.
5. Have students complete the assignment for homework and prep for short presentation in class.
6. Have students present their findings to the class.

Teacher Tips

The Web site can be used to enhance classroom instruction when presenting a certain period in history

More Ways

Be sure to check out the Teachers tab at the top.

Program Areas

• ASE: High School Diploma
• ABE: Adult Basic Education
• ASE: High School Equivalency Preparation

Documents

• Screenshot of American Presidents' page on C-SPAN.png - Screenshot of the Berkeley Whole Frog Project

Subjects

• Language Arts - Writing
  • Language Facility
  • Organization of Ideas
  • Writing Conventions
• Reasoning Through Language Arts
  • Mechanics (Capitalization, Punctuation, Spelling)
• Social Studies
  • American Government
  • U.S. History
• Writing
  • Basic Sentences
  • Mechanics (Capitalization, Punctuation, Spelling)
  • Paragraph Skills
  • Parts of Speech
  • Report Writing

Standards

• Reading
  • CCR Anchor 7 - Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.
• Writing
  • CCR Anchor 4 - Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
  • CCR Anchor 5 - Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.

Tags

Conditions

General use of The Video - Permissions and Restrictions C‑SPAN hereby grants you permission to access and use the Content as set forth in these Terms and Conditions, provided that you agree not to alter or modify any part of the Content (including, without limitation, the 'C SPAN' brand) or any of its related technologies, except that you may use the tools we provide to create and post video clips. You agree not to use the Content for any commercial use without the prior written authorization of C‑SPAN. Prohibited commercial uses include (but are not limited to) any of the following actions taken without C‑SPAN's express approval. You may not: sell access to the Content on another website; use the Content for the primary purpose of gaining advertising or subscription revenue, or soliciting donations; sell advertising on any third-party website targeted to the content of specific C SPAN Content; Any use of the Content (or other C‑SPAN resources available on the website) by you that C‑SPAN, in its sole discretion, determines competes with or may displace the market for the C‑SPAN Networks (including, C‑SPAN, C‑SPAN2, and C‑SPAN 3, C SPAN Radio, the website www.c‑span.org and the sites associated with it ) or for the Content in general, is strictly prohibited. The following uses are permitted: using the Content on an ad-enabled blog or website, provided the primary purpose of using the Content is not to gain advertising revenue or to compete with C‑SPAN; and any use that C‑SPAN expressly authorizes in writing.