Third Grade Biography Research Puppet Preview!

Third graders are beginning to do research in groups on famous North American people. They will collect information from books in our library as well as online to fill in a Biography Information Booklet. Then they will use the information collected along with a puppet they are creating in art (see cutest ever Einstein & Houdini puppets photo shown on left!) to perform a puppet show. Stay tuned to see the puppet shows once they are complete. See a list of people we are researching below as well as a list of some of the Common Core and American Association of School Librarians standards that this project will cover.

List of biographies by class:

Monteiro Helen Keller Chief Joseph Gabby Douglas Neil Armstrong Steve Jobs Roberto Clemente Charles Drew Ella Fitzgerald

Brun Albert Einstein Harry Houdini Christopher Paul Curtis Jeff Gordon Georgia Okeefe Althea Gibson Sacagawea Barbara Park

D’Ambra Louis Armstrong George Lucas Hillary Clinton Wilma Rudolph Grace Lin Sally Ride Snowflake Bentley

Multidisciplinary projects like this touch on a slew of standards plus offer students a fun and engaging way to learn. Here are just a few of the Common Core (CC) standards and American Association of School Library (AASL) standards that our puppets will cover. I haven't included the art standards here but you can be sure that the puppet piece hits quite a few.

• CC.3.W.7 Research to Build and Present Knowledge: Conduct short research projects that build knowledge about a topic.
• CC.3.W.8 Research to Build and Present Knowledge: Recall information from experiences or gather information from print and digital sources; take brief notes on sources and sort evidence into provided categories.
• CC.3.R.I.2 Key Ideas and Details: Determine the main idea of a text; recount the key details and explain how they support the main idea.
• CC.3.R.I.3 Key Ideas and Details: Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect.
• CC.3.SL.4 Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas: Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace.
• AASL 1.1.1 Follow an inquiry-based process in seeking knowledge in curricular subjects and make the real world connection for using this process in own life.
• AASL1.1.4 Find, evaluate, and select appropriate sources to answer questions.
• AASL1.1.6 Read, view, and listen for information presented in any format (e.g., textual, visual, media, digital) in order to make inferences and gather meaning.
• AASL 2.1.2 Organize knowledge so that it is useful.
• AASL 2.1.3 Use strategies to draw conclusions from information and apply knowledge to curricular areas, real world situations, and further investigations.
• AASL 2.1.4 Use technology and other information tools to analyze and organize information.
• AASL 2.4.1 Determine how to act on information (accept, reject, modify).

Finger Puppet Fables

Second graders are studying different kinds of folktales in library class. We spent several weeks listening to classic fables and identifying their three main characteristics:
1. short
2. animal characters
3. moral or lesson.
Students then created their own short fables in groups using finger puppet animals and presented them to the class. See a sample fable below. To view all fables, visit our SchoolTube page and search for the following depending on your classroom teacher:


"fable & Silveira"
"fable & Paiva"
"fable & Macnie"

The Chasing Friends