Combine Literacy and Social Studies in a Meaningful Way!

Biography deep dives are an engaging way to quickly introduce a historical person and allow students to sharpen their online investigation skills.

My students love learning about the interesting historical people and events that shaped our nation but will never show up in a history textbook.

One of my favorite historical ladies to introduce during my American Revolution unit is Lucy Knox!

This is an example of my introduction to students:

Have you heard of Lucy Knox?

If you haven’t, you’re not alone. Mrs. Lucy Knox is a lesser-known, but amazing, Revolutionary hero.

The young Lucy was the daughter of a powerful Loyalist. She met and fell in love with Henry Knox, a Major in the Continental Army. Choosing Henry meant that she would never see her Loyalist family again.

How to Do this Activity

First, I give my students a quick introduction to the individual I want them to meet.

Second, I give students 20 minutes in teams of 2 or 3 to make a list of 10 interesting facts about the person.

Finally, as a whole class, we make a collaborative list of the top 10 fascinating facts about the person we are studying.

I challenge you to implement this activity and let me know how it goes. It’s super simple but super engaging for students! I’d love to see a picture of your final collaborative list. 🙂

Extensions

• When I want to extend this activity into a writing assignment, I ask students to use their collaborative lists of interesting facts to write a short biography of the individual being studied.
• Instead of studying one historical individual, ask each group to study a different individual. To showcase what they learned, ask each group to create a poster or some other tangible representation.
• Ask students to create a works cited page to show where they found information about their historical person. This will help you reinforce the ELA research standard.

List of Individuals to Study

I created a rather large list of the people my students and I have studied during our Biography Deep Dives.

I included three categories: Early American Settlement/13 Colonies, American Revolution, and Modern America.

The lists are annotated, which means I included a quick summary of each person’s life so that students (or you) have an idea of who the person is before starting to research him/her.

I’d love for you to grab the list for free. Simply enter your name and email address below: