In this lesson students will connect with Benjamin Franklin using A Picture Book of Benjamin Franklin by David A. Adler for reference. Students will plan, design, and engineer an artifact that will better a task they encounter regularly. Through trial and error and free exploration, students will generate explanations about why their invention did or did not work.

This unit is focused on identifying Benjamin Franklin as the topic of the text. Civics is integrated through understanding that Benjamin Franklin represents the United States. Students will explore life in the 1700’s to gain background knowledge. Teacher will create an ongoing timeline to document the major events in Ben’s life as key details. Students will solve a real world problem through invention, create a newspaper article to spread news, write both an expository and opinion piece. The assessment for the unit will be a kite that is a graphic organizer for students to identify the topic and relevant details in a text.

This resource uses a book that is on the Florida Department of Education's reading list. This book is not provided with this resource.