Kimberly Corallo

Gifted Instructional Assistant

Dysart Unified School District (AZ)

Genealogical Research

Students experienced their own histories by performing research on their individual family history. They used the internet, books, and family interviews to gather information. Students tapped into the knowledge of their distant relatives to gain information about who came before them. Students formulated their research into a short 1-2 page paper about something interesting they learned about themselves. They also had to create a family tree explaining their relationship to every family member. 

Students especially enjoyed this task because they got an opportunity to personalize the lesson and actually be their own research topic. They loved the idea of learning about themselves and having conversations with their family about history. Students expressed how this project was fun and got excited when learning something new about them. Defined STEM does a great job of giving students an outline of the project while allowing enough room for the student to choose the topic and get creative. Each project was vastly different because the information was different, but students came away from the project with similar ideas of how genealogy works.