A Leader of Character

Teacher's Student Activities

Target Audience: Middle School

"THE GHOSTS OF LEADERS PAST"
An Interdisciplinary Thematic Unit

CURRICULUM FOCUS

Social Studies

INTEGRATE WITH

Language Arts, Visual and Performing Arts

OBJECTIVES

• Students will communicate ideas and information in a variety of modes.
• Students will use creative thinking skills to develop or invent novel, constructive ideas or products.
• Students will observe, analyze, and interpret human behaviors to acquire a better understanding of self, others, and human relationships.

LITERATURE LINK

These activities may be used with fiction as well as with biography. Students should focus on what advice characters from one novel would to give to a character facing a crisis in another piece of fiction. What advice would Jo March, Atticus Finch, or Scarlett O'Hara give to Huck Finn as he floats down the Mississippi or to Princess Leia as she struggles against the Empire?

This project is designed to have students research the nature of leadership through biography and demonstrate what has been learned through performance based assessment.

PRE-PROGRAM ACTIVITY

Conduct a brainstorming session in which the names of all the leaders students can think of are mind-mapped on the black board. It could begin with the seed word, LEADERS:

Example:

• LEADERS
• Mother Theresa
• Schwarzkopf
• Patton
• Eisenhower

Repeat the mind map process but change the focus. Make the seed of the map be "qualities of a good leader." Save the maps for students to make additions following the video.

POST-PROGRAM ACTIVITY

Arrange with the school librarian to make a presentation of biographies available in and through the library media center. Include people named in the pre-video mind-map as well as those named by the participants in the program. Have each student select and read a biography of a contemporary or historical leader.

Have each student create a nonrepresentational mask of their chosen leader. The facial features could be a collage of symbols that represent the power of the leader. For example, make a pun on the idea of vision by replacing the eyes with an object that represents the leader's goals. The wings of a dove may be appropriate for Mahatma Gandhi. Using dollar bills as a symbol for Ross Perot could be a good lead-in to a controversial discussion.

Have each student write a speech in the voice of their chosen leader. The setting for the speech is the imagined dream of General Schwarzkopf the night before he led his troops in the Persian Gulf War. Students must determine what advice the person they have studied would offer to the General on how to be a leader.

Have each student perform the speech and explain the symbolism of the mask. Use the performance based assessment rubric.

Extension: Form groups of four students each and have them write a play 5-10 minutes in length. Use Dicken's A Christmas Carol as the model. But instead of the ghosts of Christmas giving advice to Scrooge, the play could be the "ghosts" of the various leaders studied by the students giving their advice to General Schwarzkopf. Have each group perform for the class.

Target Audience: High School

"THE BEST WAY TO BE A LEADER"
An Interdisciplinary Thematic Unit

CURRICULUM FOCUS

Government, Civics

INTEGRATE WITH

US History, English, Psychology, Sociology, Performing Arts

OBJECTIVES

• Students will use technology to gather, organize, manipulate and express information and ideas.
• Students will recognize the rights and responsibilities of citizenship/leadership in a democratic society.

LITERATURE LINK

There are a variety of books that could supplement the study of leadership. Profiles in Courage by John Kennedy, for example, could be used as a pre-video activity to assist students in generating a profile of leadership qualities. A follow-up discussion might center on a comparison of the student's findings with the ideas presented in the program.

The Achievement Television motto is "The best way to become a leader is by getting to know one." This unit is designed to have students do just that by learning how to conduct interviews and how to produce their own video.

PRE-PROGRAM ACTIVITY

Have students brainstorm a list of questions a TV reporter would ask the program guests. Then ask students to add their own questions to the list.

POST-PROGRAM ACTIVITY

Produce a video of your class interviewing a local community leader. The Leader of Character video might be used as a model.
Find out what resources are available. Do you have video cameras? VCRs?
Use a brainstorming process with your class to list possible leaders to be interviewed. After one is chosen, it will be necessary to do background research and prepare a list of interview questions. Prepare a shooting script. The Video Segment Outline could serve as a model.
Assign work duties. Depending on how complex your project is, these could include: moderator, student audience members, camera crew, set construction, editors.
Tape the interview.
View the final product. Use the performance-based assessment rubric to conduct individual and group assessment.
Extension: Producing work for an authentic audience is important. If possible, make arrangements for the student produced video(s) to be broadcast on your local community access television station. Contact the facility before beginning the unit. You will probably discover a host of willing volunteers and resources.

PLUGGING INTO THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY

Cyber Sources

Educational Online Sources

Educom

Project Gutenberg

Reinventing Schools: The Technology is Now

U.S. Department of Education

Yahoo

Yahoo is a subject oriented Internet browser. Choose "Education" and then have your pick!

ELECTRONIC SCAVENGER HUNT

Objective:
Students will develop electronic research skills and examine leadership in a variety of fields.
Activity:
This classroom exercise is a variation on the more well known Internet Scavenger Hunt. Have your students use the Internet to find the answers to the questions below. But because the answers can also be found in other media, the acceptable solution must include the Internet address or site where the answer was found. (Several sites may have the correct answer.) A place for students to start could be with browsers like Yahoo or Webcrawler.
Adapt the hunt to suit your needs. A bonus may be offered for unusual finds/sites. Have students design scavenger hunts for each other. Experienced Internet students might set up a help desk for the school.
Conclusion:
Conduct a discussion that summarizes search methods and discoveries. What additional information was learned about leadership during the scavenger hunt?

THE HUNT
Scavenge the answers to these questions:

1.) What is the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States?

2.) When President Bill Clinton was a high school senior, he met and shook the hand of the President of the United States in the Rose Garden of the White House. Which president did he meet?

3.) In what year did the Russian born painter, Marc Chagall, first arrive in Paris?

4.) Who was the last US citizen to win the Nobel Prize for Literature? When?

Answers:

1. "Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion..."
http://lcweb2.loc.gov:8080/bor.html

2. President John F. Kennedy
http://www.whitehouse.gov/White_House/Family/html/Life.html

3. 1914
http://www.oir.ucf.edu/louvre/paint/auth/chagall/

4. Toni Morrison, 1993
http://logos.svenska.gu.se/nobel.html