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Loving our pets is universal - be it a dog, a cat, a bird or a pony. Cheryl Harness takes a look at history through the pets that have occupied the White House, and that gets kids to the White House in the most interesting way possible! |
Social Studies
US History - Presidents
STEM
Collecting and graphing information
Research Skills
Exploring Wikipedia
Gone are the days when the information in Wikipedia is completely unreliable. In fact, Wikipedia can be a great place to start one’s research, as long as it is not the last stop! There are lots of research based activities you could explore with this Minute. Look up United States presidential pets in Wikipedia.
US History - Presidents
- Author Harness mentions quite a few presidents in this Minute. Have students create a timeline of presidents accompanied with their pets. Challenge them to think about whether the type of pet can be explained by the time period during which the president served.
STEM
Collecting and graphing information
- This Minute is perfect for practicing graphing skills. First, have students read the article and count the animals mentioned. Have them organize the animals by types. Use the age and abilities of your students as a guide for how basic or intricate you want them to get in graphing their results. What kind of graph works best? Bar? Pie? For older students, have them add in the information they get from the Wikipedia exercise below. Use the opportunity to talk about the best ways to organize and display information. After graphing, have students think about what conclusions one might draw from organizing the information like this.
- What’s the best pet to have in a place like the White House? Have students think about animal behaviors and the environment, develop a criteria set, and then make a case for the “best” pet for a presidential family to acquire!
Research Skills
Exploring Wikipedia
Gone are the days when the information in Wikipedia is completely unreliable. In fact, Wikipedia can be a great place to start one’s research, as long as it is not the last stop! There are lots of research based activities you could explore with this Minute. Look up United States presidential pets in Wikipedia.
- Take this Minute to talk to students about the “do’s” and “don’ts” of Wikipedia use in research.
- Have students collect information from the chart and place it in a spreadsheet in preparation for collating results for the STEM graphing activity described above.
- Have students follow the citation numbers to the bottom of the Wikipedia page. Explore some of the links that are listed as the source of information.
- After students follow the sources, have them practice writing citations for “Works Cited” pages - check with your school librarian for the best tools for creating citations.
- Reinforce that Wikipedia is a great place to start, but should never be cited. If they find information they want to use in Wikipedia, they need to find it in at least two other places before they use the information and cite it in a finished piece.
© Karen Sterling, 2017 - May be used for educational purposes without written permission
