Description:
Engage your students by guiding them through research on their favorite subject – themselves! Introduce the lesson with a word search puzzle featuring the names of the entire class, then read Kevin Henkes’ Chrysanthemum for a bitter/sweet story that we with unusual names can appreciate. After guided research using print materials, Internet sites and personal interviews, students will introduce themselves to you and to the class in an oral report. Validate their uniqueness and, along the way, learn their names through stories you will never forget.
Goals & Objectives:
Materials & Sources:
Websites:
Print materials:
- Stories about names:
- Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes Wilfrid
- Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem
- Fox Josefina Hates Her Name by Joanna Engel
- Tikki Tikki Tembo by Arlene Mosel
- Rumpelstiltskin by Paul Zelinsky
- Too Many Daves in Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss
- An assortment of baby name books, available at libraries and many supermarkets.
Handouts:
- Steps in the Research Process
- Parent Interview Rubric
Procedures:
Read Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes or another of the stories about names.
Discussion:
- what do you know about your own name? How do you feel about it?
- Introduce the Steps in the Research Process, which is the Big 6 rewritten in student-friendly language. Have students brainstorm research questions for Step 2.
- Have students use Baby Name books and the website Behind the Name to find out everything they can about their names. They should take notes of the information they find, including the source where they found it.
- Ask students to interview their parents or guardians using the Parent Interview handout as a guide. They should take notes on the interview form.
- When students have finished gathering their information, they will prepare and practice an oral presentation to introduce themselves to the audience, which may include parents, administrators, and other students.
Enrichment activities to integrate technology and add fun to the unit:
- creating and solving a word search puzzle with the students' names using a website to see their names in hieroglyphics on a cartouche reading additional stories that use names as part of the plot or the researching the most popular names in the year students were born with.
Assessment:
Content, research process and oral presentation skills will be evaluated with a rubric.
Sources:
"What's In a Name" in Creative Classroom magazine (now defunct),
August, 1997.
