Famous Athletes and Musicians (9th Grade)

Hello again my beautiful teachers!

This time around we are going to tackle a 9th Grade topic that can always be a lot of fun! LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENT OF FAMOUS ATHLETES AND MUSICIANS. 


For this activity we're going to be incorporating some technology into it to make it that much funner!

To introduce the topic, we will talk about what famous athletes or musicians students like and what they know about them.

Students will then be paired up using the Stick-In-A-Cup method. (Every student picks a stick out of a cup. Two sticks will have the same number so once everyone has a stick they have to find their pair according to the number on the stick.)

Once the pairs are made, students will choose a famous athlete or musician to do a thorough research on their life because they will later be interviewing each "Famous Person."

After the students have researched their famous person they will decide who will be the interviewer and who will be the famous Athlete or Musician. The roles will interchange later on. 

We will watch a couple of short interviews using youtube to see what type of interviews can be done so that the students can start getting an idea of what type of questions to ask their partner. 

Working with their partner the students will type up a dialogue for an interview based on what they have learned about their famous person.

I will record the interview but the catch is that the students have to get into character and act or speak like their famous person.  The roles will then be switched so that the interviewer will then be the famous person.

After I have recorded all my students then I will make a one big video of all the interviews and share with the class.

 Here are two very short videos. One is of Bob Marley, a famous musician and Bethany Hamilton, a famous surfer. 

Bob Marley Interview

Bethany Hamilton Interview

I really like this activity because from the surface it seems very fun and simple but it involves so much more. It involves technology because the students will need to access the internet to research their chosen person along with being in front of the camera which indirectly they are in the presence of technology, something that they might not be in contact with every day. Also, it is asked that the students type up their dialogue which involved word-processing. They can easily write it down but being able to edit, spell check, play with graphics and the page layouts allows them to be more creative with their dialogue. 

If you try it out, let me know how it went and if you altered anything please go ahead and share what changes you did and it how it went.