Are you studying the U.S. presidents with your students? Do you want engaging ways to use biographies of the U.S. presidents in your classroom? Names and dates can quickly go in one ear and out the other, but when you bring the U.S. presidents to life through biographies, interactive activities, and lessons, your students will find connections and love learning about those who have led our nation. Here are some fun and engaging ideas to help bring U.S. president biographies and stories about the presidents to life in your classroom.
Reading Passages and Short Biographies
In the classroom, I have found that there is nothing more engaging for students than learning about history through storytelling. In order to make history come alive, it’s important to tell stories and make connections.
Biographies of the presidents of the United States are excellent sources for telling these kinds of stories and can help students learn about our country’s leaders in a way they will enjoy and remember.
Allow students time to read, share, and discuss passages, articles, and biographies. Using short, engaging informational passages will give students a great foundation for learning about presidents and encourage them to seek more information.
Make a Presidential Timeline
Timelines are a great way to help students understand the chronological order of events, people, and time periods. Using a timeline for any subject can help students find patterns or relationships in the subjects they are studying. Timelines are also a great way to encourage students to draw conclusions about the impact of certain events and people on a time period.
Creating a presidential timeline can be a fun, easy way to help students understand the transitions between presidents and how they may have affected one another.
This President’s Timeline is a great starting point. You can begin with it and use the U.S. president printable biographies in this resource to study each president and add them to the timeline.
The resource has differentiated templates for timelines, making it easy to use in most classrooms. Students can either fill in all the information or use one of the pre-filled options.
U.S. President Biography Poster
After reading about the U.S. presidents, ask students to create a biography poster for their favorite president or the president they most relate to and present them to the class or display them.
You’ve probably seen the popular “about me” style posters for the first day of school. You can use a similar template or example and allow your students to create an “about President _____” poster.
Guess That U.S. President
After reading and studying all the presidents, assign each student a president and have the students re-read short passages about their given president. Each student should choose 3-5 brief, interesting facts about their designated president and share them with the class. The class will then try to guess the president.
It’s a good idea for each student to have a presidential yearbook or timeline available when playing this game.
Presidential Jeopardy
Play a “Jeopardy” style game with questions about U.S. presidents (Jeopary games work great for almost any topic). Split students into two teams and have them compete to answer questions from different categories, such as important dates, facts about the presidents, what they did while in office, etc. You can break the presidents down into time periods to make this game a little easier.
Create a US President Yearbook
My students love hands-on activities, no matter the topic at hand. Creating a U.S. presidential yearbook is a class favorite and really helps students relate to the presidents.
You can use the biographies and templates from this resource to easily create the yearbook. Each student can create their own personal yearbook or you can work together as a class to create one yearbook. There are differentiated templates, making it easy to use with any class or upper elementary grade level.
No Prep Biographies of the U.s. presidents
Looking for a no-prep way to use presidential biographies in your classroom? My U.S. presidents resource is the perfect print-and-go resource for grades 4 through 8 and covers all 44 United States Presidents.
My U.S. Presidents Informational Articles and Yearbook resource includes:
- informational text on all 44 United States Presidents in printer-friendly black/white and color
- yearbook-style summary pages in 3 leveled options: blank version, lined version, and pre-completed version
- info cards for each president
The yearbook style cards have either space to write or pre-filled facts on each president. Spaces include president name, years in office, vice president name, political party, and first lady name.
The info cards have the president’s name and years in office, just the president’s name, and just years in office – making these an excellent option for sorting and matching activities.
This resource is excellent to have on hand for celebrating President’s Day in February. It’s also perfect for studying presidents in U.S History, as a substitute activity, or any time of the year!
The possibilities are endless when it comes to teaching and learning about the United States Presidents! With these fun activities, your students will be engaged and excited to learn more about the people who have led our nation. And don’t forget – President’s Day is celebrated on the third Monday in February! Mark your calendars so you can celebrate our country’s leaders together as a class.
Are you looking for more President’s Day activities for your classroom? Be sure to check out this roundup of 10 President’s Day activities your students will love!
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