S16: Blog 7: The Biography Project Part 1
- Emily Johnson
- Feb 25, 2016
- 4 min read
Recently I’ve begun a new project with one of the two small reading groups that I pull on the mornings I am in my internship classroom. This group is made up of 4 of my higher-level readers to whom I wanted to provide a little extra challenge in a fun way.
I don’t have too many clear-cut memories of things I did in elementary school anymore, it seems like so much longer ago than it truly was. But, the memories of do have are of really fun projects I got to do and experiences that I got to have. One of these projects was one created by my 2nd grade teacher about biographies. We each got to choose a biography about a historical figure and utilize that book to do research about that person. The reading and research we did was applied to various activities over a few weeks. At the end, we wrote a speech speaking as if we were the person that we gave in front of our classmates and our parents. We also got to dress up like our person to give the speech. I was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and to this day my parents talk about how into the project I got.
When I started thinking about a project that I could do to challenge my students, the thought of doing something similar to that biography project immediately came to mind. I quickly realized it was also a great way to integrate more social studies into the school day. Also, it helps my students to practice meeting a major goal that they must achieve by the end of the year- being able to write summaries of both fiction and non-fiction works. These 4 students are very much capable of doing this but often don’t want to write. So I’ve made some changes to the project I completed when I was around their age to make the writing aspect more engaging.
I found one of my textbooks from my literacy class to be a great resource. Strategies That Work (Harvey and Goudvis, 2007) provided me the idea of having my students create a “teaching book” about the topic person of their biographies. I have decided that these books will consist of different pages that will discuss different parts of the lives of their subjects. For example, page titles will include things like “childhood” and “major achievements.” This will involve my students having to write, probably even more than they are used to, but it will also give them the opportunity to create illustrations at the top of every page in their book. I am hoping that the drawing aspect will give them the motivation to work hard on their writing, because they will have to write before they illustrate. I am also hoping that because I allowed them to choose their own historical figures about which to learn that they will be more engaged and motivated.
I began the project by going over what biographies are with my small group of students and doing a read-aloud of a biography about John F. Kennedy. This is the book that I will be using to model the writing for my students. Over the next days I displayed the biographies I had acquired about people, such as Muhammed Ali, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Edison, and allowed my students to look through them and make their decision about whom they would like to do their project. Currently we are taking time to read the biographies; I picked out more than one about each person so that my students are able to compare them and get all the facts they need. I am specifically having my students place sticky notes on pages where they find interesting information about the childhoods of their people.
On Tuesday, when I will be observed by one of my literacy instructors, we are going to begin the writing process and create the first page of our teaching books. I am going to model writing a page in my book about the childhood of President Kennedy and then allow my students to begin working on their own pages. This will probably be continued over the next few days as my students edit their writing and draw their first illustrations.
In the coming weeks my students will complete more pages in their teaching books and become experts on the lives of their biography subjects. Ultimately, my goal is for my students after creating their books, use the information within them to create a speech that they will give to their classmates as if they were that person, just like I did so long ago. I’ve already begun scouring the internet for some creative costume ideas.
I have high hopes and expectations for how well my students will do on this project and how much they will enjoy it too. There is much more about this topic to come!
Addresses FEAPS 1 b, c and f 3 a, e, and h
Harvey, S., & Goudvis, A. (2007). Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement (2nd ed.). Portland, Maine: Stenhouse.
Comments