Introduction / Overview
The goal of this unit is to teach students how to "read" documentary films, Barack Obama's biography, and graphic images. Each of these sub categorical texts will support students learning how to read nonfiction. Biography will be used as the primary text for engaging students in the lives of others, and as a means to persuade them to reflect on their own lives. Although there are many types of nonfiction such as journals, essays, and journalism, biography, is the only type of nonfiction to give in depth coverage of a subject. Thus, students are able to acquire nonfiction writing skills/strategies, via political image analysis, and extensive reading of nonfiction texts. This approach is designed to shift students' view of nonfiction as dry text with "real" facts. Astonishingly, some English teachers partially share this view because English teacher training has been primarily in teaching fiction and teaching writing in response to reading fiction. To underscore this point, when many teachers and students read biography, their focus is limited to recalling the chronological facts and events from one's life. What a boring approach to the genre of nonfiction, particularly biography. To expand this limited approach, students will primarily learn that biographies and documentaries are rich in discussion topics and writing ideas that can enable them to explore the real world. As students begin to see and feel biographies as a compelling type of nonfiction to be responded to, the more active their wonder will become in learning about someone else's narrative. Furthermore, compelling biographical texts can help students and teachers in a myriad of ways. For example, well -written nonfiction can improve students' civic awareness, strengthen their critical thinking skills, increase students' appreciation for how factual detail informs the truth, and motivate students to carefully consider the artistry of beautifully designed informational texts. Guardedly, I would add that nonfiction texts may even improve students' scores on standardized tests by helping readers become familiar with the types of nonfiction passages that regularly appear on "high stakes" tests.
A stark reality in public education is that students spend an enormous amount of time reading fiction from first through twelfth grades. In fact, in grades one through four, fiction is primarily used to teach students to read. However, in fifth through twelfth grades students are instructed to read to learn. This conversion of reading presumes that students have mastered critical reading skills such as being able to: identify facts, draw inferences and conclusions, form judgments, and support opinions. While some students have mastered these skills along with the phonics of reading, many students have not. Not only have students not mastered these skills; they have barely learned the basics of reading. Hence, many students arrive in high school with a rudimentary understanding of fiction and a severely limited understanding of nonfiction. Nonfiction is simply characterized by many students as being "true." Many students mistakenly believe that "reality TV" is real and everything true must be "objective." They have not learned the ways in which nonfiction texts such as: documentaries, biographies, images, and even autobiographies can prejudicially construct or reconstruct the truth. So while students are overwhelmed with nonfiction media in and outside of school scant in-depth instruction is given to teaching them to ask critical questions like: how is this text constructed, for what purpose, and from whose point of view?
Another stark reality in public education today is that students spend an enormous amount of time taking "high stakes" standardized test. Surprisingly, I have observed the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) routinely ask students to respond to 50% of nonfiction questions. This presents an inconsistency for teachers in states which prescribe heavily scripted curriculums. English Curriculums usually interweave nonfiction texts into anthologies, canons, and lesson plans. The study of nonfiction is usually limited to a few autobiographies, essays, and letters that are taught throughout the school year. The scarcity of nonfiction learning opportunities in scripted curriculums denies students the chance to master the in-depth analysis, synthesis, and evaluative reading and writing skills universally associated with understanding nonfiction. Hence, if teachers are scarcely teaching nonfiction texts; then students are scarcely learning to read, know, and understand the very material that will demand 95 percent of their attention once they leave secondary education.
Studying biography is the perfect antidote for this malady. Although maligned by some as having no rules; biography is the nonfiction genre most likely to spur students' passion for learning about others and themselves. Passion and wonder are contagious and blend seamlessly into a narrative that makes abstract pivotal moments concrete in one's life. In the process students will eventually understand the essence of nonfiction is to discern the use of fact, inference, judgment, and opinion.
Ultimately, students will keenly discern the differences between reading fiction and nonfiction and develop an efferent approach 1 when reading nonfiction. Educational theorist Louise Rosenblatt asserts the efferent reading stance pays more attention to the cognitive, the referential, the factual, the analytic, the logical, and the quantitative aspects of meaning. Thus, in teaching students about the three main elements in a documentary: visual, sound, and text tracks and the elements and structure of biography this approach will enable students to engage these nonfiction texts on levels far beyond their entertainment value. In fact, requiring students to read film, text, and speeches shapes their understanding of knowing which strategies and graphic organizers work best (plot diagram or Venn diagram) to write effectively about real people in real situations.
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