Biography Movie Trailer Using Quotations and Photopeach

Do you want to integrate more technology using web 2.0 tools? Looking for Common Core lessons? Need a project students will love? Check out this lesson.

This lesson was developed as part of a biography unit in response to these Common Core standards and district "I can" statement:
I can recognize quotations in text while reading.
Writing 6 � Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and link to and cite sources as well as to interact and collaborate with others, including linking to and citing sources.
Writing 7 � Conduct short research projects to answer a question, drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions for further research and investigation.
Writing 8 � Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, using search terms effectively; assess the credibility and accuracy of each source;and quote or paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation.

By responding to a RAFT type prompt, students create a multimedia project using the website photopeach.com integrating photographs, text, and music.

This two page assignment gives students detailed directions with frequent check-in points to keep them on track. All of my students were successful and enjoyed this assignment.

This project took approximately 6 hour-long periods, which included time for computers to be distributed, logged in, accidentally shut down a few times due to a foot by a power strip, and a little too much chatter! Very focused students with cooperative computers could likely complete it in two hours, with ample time to browse for quotes, pictures, and music.

While it could be used independently of any text book, this lesson sprang from the McDougal Littel Literature 7th grade text book biography unit, specifically following the Lance Armstrong excerpts "It's Not About the Bike" and "28 Days in July."

Biography Movie Trailer Using Quotations and Photopeach by Carrie Okland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.