Signers of the Declaration of Independence Assignment

Title: Signers of the Declaration of Independence Assignment

Objective/s: Learner will research an assigned Signer of the Declaration and come to class as that person with clues about who they are for their classmates to guess who they are.

Assignment type: Formative

Assignment Details
1. Student will be assigned the name of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
2. The student will research that signer’s life before and after signing the historic document.
3. Student will write a one page biography of the signer’s life.
4. In a face-to-face class, the student may come wearing clues or dressed as the signer. Each person should bring a document with the facts to submit to the instructor. In an online classroom, the student will start a thread of their own asking “Who am I?”
5. In either the face-to-face setting or online, the student will give one clue at a time to classmates providing a certain amount of time for guesses by classmates. (Students should be prepared with 10-20 clues about the person they were assigned.)
6. Class will use their own knowledge of signers to guess who their classmate is.

Rubric
Researched and found a minimum number of facts about their Declaration Signer-10 points
Composed a one page concise biography of signer-40 points
Participated in discussion and/or dressed in costume with clues on who they are-40 points
Cited Biography used for assignment in proper APA or MLA format-10 points

Savenger Hunt Assignment

In October, I described the idea of an internet scavenger hunt specifying that students might search a particular website for information. This week my students researched a particular identification term. I designed the assignment to explore several course competencies including acquiring information, breaking multiple sources down into parts, using library resources, recognizing secondary sources, and locating specific primary sources.

First, create a bank of terms for students to select a term that most interests them. Second, encourage students to search their course resources and the internet for the following that relates to that term (I require 10).
a. Map
b. Video Clip
c. Audio Clip
d. Photograph
e. Government document
f. Letter written by someone related to the term
g. Diary written by someone related to the term
h. Newspaper Article
i. History Journal Article
j. Web Article
k. Glossary or Wikipedia type definition of term
l. Picture of artifact
m. Artwork related to term
n. Novel or short story
o. Textbook Reference
p. Museum Exhibit
q. Memorial
r. Modern movie made about term
Then students submit a one-paragraph description of the term describing who, what, where, when, and historical significance of the term, their list of sources with a brief description of what they found at each source and how it relates to the term, and they identify the web source is a primary source or secondary source.

Another option to this assignment is to do a scavenger hunt for a larger topic like Black History Month. Create a list of what to look for and have students search in groups posting their results in discussions. How do you incorporate the concept of Primary/Secondary sources in your assignments?