Students will infer and synthesize what family, personal and leader characteristics they will need to develop so that they can become a future leader for California. They will document their family history and personal narrative with pictures they have scanned on the computer. Through a writing workshop format use the book Family Pictures by Carmen Lomas Garza to model a family history narrative. Students answer the questions found on the student page and turn them into four paragraphs which discuss student, family, celebrations and dreams. Allow for several weeks so student may go through the writing process and publish a one to two page narrative with pictures.
Published book can be a single family history book or a class family history book.
Biography Form teams of four to six to choose a leader they would like to research in books and on the Internet. Have them make a graphic organizer in which they answer key questions they will be investigating about their leader. There findings may be kept on index cards and typed onto the graphic organizer. Need to teach how to copy and paste from the Internet site to their graphic organizer. This is a bit hard to have two screens up and copy and paste but with a lot of patience the students can do it.