Burning Questions

Resource Ideas

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Description

"Burning Questions" is a study of the biographies of original thinkers - people who have questioned the world around them and made important choices and discoveries as a result. The biographies should be of inventors and discoverers who followed their own burning questions.

As they read, students should be encouraged to develop their skills in reading informational material, summarizing, reporting, and critical thinking. They should also be encouraged to explore their own "burning questions".

This unit offers a number of connections to other curricula: science (invention and discovery, scientific processes), social studies (biography), mathematics (statistics), and fine arts. Students can also make connections to other fields and areas of interest by identifying people in those fields who asked important questions.

Major Integrated Resource (MIR)

• Identities 8 available from Oxford University Press (Canada)

• Time 100 by Time Magazine - 100 most influential people of the Century
• Great Thinkers and Visionaries - This is a list of people whose ideas on how and where the world is - and should be - evolving, may be of interest to those who want to understand the frontier of human thought.
• Distinguished Women of Past and Present - Alphabetical index of names of women who persevered against odds that should have been overwhelming--and they triumphed.
• Famous Canadians - The ABC of Famous Canadians
• The Biography Maker - This web site is like those homework machines we have been hearing about for many years. It is designed to help you convert facts into insights, dull and boring information into fascination and magic. It will help you do a good job, but you must provide some of the "steam" to make it work well.
• Writing: Biographies - These sites offer tips for writing biographies. There are lesson plans, helpful handouts, rubrics, and examples of biographies written by elementary students. Includes a video about the writing process.
• Biography and Timeline Book Report - A lesson plan where rather than doing a "traditional" research paper, the author Susan Harris has her students select a biography and have the experience of actually "becoming" the person who they researched.
• Biography Project: Research and Class Presentation - Students improve their comprehension in this biography project through the use of graphic organizers, rubrics, and cooperative learning. They each research a famous person, make a graphic organizer (a web), present main aspects of the person's life to the class, and give feedback to one another throughout the project.

Web Quests

• Famous Scientists/Inventors Challenge - an online voyage of discovery about people who have questioned the world around them and made important choices and discoveries as a result. It is an opportunity for students to investigate the lives of inventors and discoverers who followed their own burning questions.

Do you have a lesson plan, resource or web site you would like to contribute to this page? Contact us at: Online Learning Centre

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