Birthdays Are Special Teacher's Notes
In this activity, students are going to find famous people who were born on their birth date or the birth date of someone in their family. They will be asked to compare their own personality traits, special abilities and interests with those of their famous birthday partners'.
Media / Biennio
One or two 45-minute lessons
Individual or pairs
The students can ...
... follow links on the Internet.
... identify famous people who were born on the same day as them.
... compare personality traits.
The students will be able to ...
... tell facts about famous people.
... follow simple directions.
... identify relevant information.
... express likes and dislikes.
... use information tools, such as a dictionary.
After a general discussion about birthdays, months and years, ask the students if they know anyone famous, dead or alive, who was born on the same date as they were.
If anyone does, talk about who these people were, what they were like and if people born on the same day have similar characteristics.
The following activities direct the students to Internet sites where they can find people who were born on the same date (not year) as they were. The activities are divided into two parts, fact finding and reading deeper for further information.
The two activities are similar, but relate to different Internet sites. Please choose the activity best suited to you and your students.
Activity One Activity Two
The students can use one of the following sites:
Infoplease at http://www.infoplease.com/
The History Channel at http://www.historychannel.com/thisday/
Famous Birthdays at http://www.famousbirthdays.com/
Divide the students into groups according to the month they were born.
Ask them to make a timeline for the birth dates of the famous people born in their month and another timeline of their birth dates.
Display these timelines in class.
Discuss the different famous birthday partners in relation to:
what they are / were famous for.
their personality traits.
their special abilities or interests.You may ask each student to do an oral, written, or multimedia report on one of their famous birthday partners.
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