Bio's the Breakfast of Champions

Growing up as a kid so involved in sports you always knew you made it when your life was immortalized with a box of Wheaties. You some how became a champion for something you did and it probably was a really amazing feeling to be on the box of this legendary product. Here is an example of one of the past champs, Jessie Owens, former Olympian, who during the 30's won Olympic gold despite being treated poorly due to the colour of his skin. He persevered and went onto be a true champion.

With this in mind a few years ago I was thinking of a way to cover my media unit and cross it over with a biography unit to my group of grade six students. I looked at a box of Wheaties and came up with idea of having my students do something similar to what Wheaties has been doing for years. Come up with their own cereal and cereal box and base it around a famous person they where studying. The students loved this idea. Not only did they get a chance to investigate someone of their choice but they also got to come up with their very own product. To throw in an added twist the students came up with a prize in the box related to their famous person. I remember one student who did a box based on Wayne Gretzky and they had a hockey puck in the box and named their cereal MVP. Here is another example of for John F. Kennedy.

As you can see we have a new name for the cereal. On the sides of the box like the nutritional facts and ingredients we have a timeline about the person and a quick facts list on the other side. On the back of the box is a one page summary about the person selected to study.

In our, TPT store you can currently find a package for American Presidents, and also one for Famous People. Each package comes with several graphic organizers, definitions of a biography, instructions for the project, a rubric for the project, and of course templates for the various size of cereal boxes you might come across. If you want more info and to see more of these projects slip on over to our site and pull up a bowl of Kennedy Krispies to see if these projects would fit great in your classroom.