It may easily be adapted to meet all skill and grade levels. Variations described at the end of the lesson cycle demonstrate alternatives for limited time or multi-day implementation. This lesson plan can be repeated monthly, bi-monthly, once a semester or presented only one time, depending on school or district goals for implementation. Additional enrichment activities provide opportunities to build on the birthday research lessons. These might be imple-mented, one activity a month, to create a full year program.
Many variations are available to the teacher.
In teaming situations, often the research component will be conducted in language arts or social studies and the other activities will be divided among the other core content classes. As the students begin to associate concrete behavior with the concepts of respect, responsibility, honesty, kindness, trustworthiness and effort, use group discussion, activity sheets, or a writing assignment to have students analyze a fictional character from a novel or story they have read recently at school, or a favorite library book or classic, and support one of the character's positive character traits. This activity could be related to people in the news or even television show characters. The important thing is to not stop questioning. This activity not only builds on the discussions and work of any or all of the other activities, it integrates oral communications skill-building and utilizes the highest level of thinking as students synthesize their results in conclusion statements.