Benjamin Franklin: A Life Driven by Curiosity

Help students discover the man behind the famous name with this engaging, evidence-based Benjamin Franklin resource!

Benjamin Franklin: A Life Driven by Curiosity takes students beyond a basic biography and asks them to investigate what made Franklin such an unusual and influential American. Through reading, evidence gathering, historical inference, and primary-source analysis, students explore Franklin's life as a printer, writer, inventor, scientist, community builder, and statesman.

What’s Included:

? Informational Reading
Students read a six-section illustrated biography covering Franklin's childhood, love of learning, printing career, inventions and experiments, efforts to unite the colonies, changing relationship with Britain, and contributions to the founding of the United States.

? Find the Evidence
Students return to the reading to locate evidence about Franklin's character, interests, accomplishments, and goals.

✅ Fact or Fiction
Students distinguish accurate statements from misconceptions about Benjamin Franklin and support their thinking with evidence.

? Build Benjamin Franklin
Students use information from the resource to complete a creative body-biography activity featuring nine evidence-based prompts:
I Watched • I Listened • I Felt • I Said • I Touched • I Thought • I Feared • I Tried • I Succeeded

? Primary Source / Mini-DBQ
Students examine Franklin's famous “Join, or Die.” image from 1754 and consider what the image reveals about colonial cooperation and Franklin's concerns about the future of the colonies.

? Final Challenge
Students return to the essential question:

What made Benjamin Franklin such an unusual American?

Students use evidence from the resource to develop their own response.

Skills Practiced

• Close reading
• Finding and citing textual evidence
• Historical thinking
• Making evidence-supported inferences
• Primary-source analysis
• Reading visual sources
• Understanding cause and effect
• Constructing an evidence-based response

Teacher-Friendly Features

✔ Student pages are ready to print and use
✔ Self-contained resource—students do not need internet access to complete the core activities
✔ Primary-source analysis is included
✔ Teacher answer key included
✔ Designed to work as an individual lesson, mini-unit, or supplemental American history resource

Suggested Grade Level: Grades 5–7
Subject: U.S. History / Social Studies
Topic: Benjamin Franklin, Colonial America, American Revolution, Founding Fathers
Format: Printable PDF
Time: Approximately 2–3 class periods, depending on pacing and discussion

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