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C-SPAN: American Presidents Life Portraits
Details
Main Website:
Activity Website:
Activity Description
Source: https://www.c-span.org/series/?presidents&pres=46 (License: Protected by Copyright (c) [i.e. screenshot])
In this activity, students watch a biographical vignette about an American president of choice and take notes. Students are then asked to write an essay about the president selected and share what they learned with the class. This site also has teacher guides for all 41 programs from C-SPAN’s television series, American Presidents: Life Portraits. There are also numerous video resources to enhance classroom instruction on presidents.
Preparation
- Make sure that the site is not blocked at your school and that the videos can be viewed.
- Preview the video and select the ones you want students to view.
- View resources about a president by selecting a president in the Pick a President dropdown menu at the top of the page.
- Prepare a template for students to fill in data about their president.
- Decide if you want students to work in groups or individually and which presidents you will be highlighting.
- Prepare a link on your computers, or class Web site so students can easily access the site.
How-To
- Introduce the Web site to students and demonstrate how to find needed resources for one of the presidents.
- Pass out the template and explain what is needed.
- Assign or let students select a president.
- Give students time to research their president and complete the template.
- Have students complete the assignment for homework and prep for short presentation in class.
- 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
American, American Presidents, C-SPAN, historical, history, portrait, president, presidential, resources, term, America