President's Day is celebrated in honor of Washington's birthday on February 16. Take this advantage to teach your students about all of the presidents who have served the United States of America. Having your students put together a President booklet will not only involve them in the learning process, but provide a great way for them to learn about each president.
Create a President Booklet
Putting together a president's booklet with your students to celebrate President's Day on February 16. Either provide your students the blank booklet to add information to, or have them put their own booklet together. There should be 46 blank pages between two pieces of brown construction paper. Staple or otherwise fasten the pages together to make the booklet.
The cover of the book should include a title that the student picks, as well as a picture of one president. You can find pictures of each president online. The first blank page inside the cover should be the title page. Have your students go through your classroom library to discover what belongs on the title page. The next page should be the table of contents, listing each president's name starting with George Washington and ending with Barack Obama.
Learn Interesting Facts about Each President
Share books such as Smart about the Presidents by Jon Buller [Grosset and Dunlap, 2004] and others to have your students learn interesting facts about the presidents. Consider grouping your students together and assigning them each several presidents to learn about and report to the class. The report should include the president's birth date and date of death if applicable. They should share information about the important things that the president did in office, and any fun facts that they learned along the way.
Students should then put together an informational page on each president based on the facts learned and shared by their classmates. Each page can include all of the important details in either list form or paragraph form. Allow the students to have ownership over their books, making decisions on what information to include, and how to include it.
How to Grade Project Assignment
Provide students with a rubric at the beginning of the project so that they know what they need to have done by the end. Require students to include a variety of information about each president, including pictures. Some ideas to require students to include:
- Cover with picture and title
- Title page
- Table of Contents
- One page dedicated to each president
- Date of birth and death (where applicable) for each president
- Dates the President was in office
- 3 important facts about the president (or however many facts you deem reasonable)
Having student doing research about each president, and putting together a president booklet is a great way to celebrate President's Day this February. Students will enjoy the non-traditional form of learning, and will have a great finished product to take home with them.
You may be interested in other ideas for History lessons.
Find more presidential lesson plan ideas.
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