Creating Lives: An Introduction to Biography

Classroom Activities

Lesson One – Biographies

What is a biography? How does the form of biography enter into our understanding of the form of a life? How does biography have influence on our society? How do biographies mirror what is socially acceptable and important while telling a person's life?

This introductory lesson gives students an opportunity to learn about what a biography is and the biographer's crafting of a person's life story.

Anticipatory Set: Have students brainstorm facts about a person (teacher or classmate). Write these down in their learning journals. Ask questions about the information. Compare and contrast what was listed.

Directed Instruction: Introduce the genre of biography. In groups, have students list the types of biographies such as obituaries and reality television. They may not have many answers. However, they should share out the ones they have brainstormed. View PowerPoint about biographies and take notes on graphic organizer.

Activity: Students will be divided first into pairs and then groups of four to read and discuss a variety of text excerpts from different biographies. Students will use their Proficient Reading Strategies to better comprehend what they are reading. They will compare and contrast their observations to better understand the components of a biography.

Assessment: Students' Check for Understanding in which they will need to explain what is a biography, its characteristics, and why it is useful in understanding others and ourselves.

Lesson Two – Cesar Chavez – Biography Model

What qualities define this person? What is the purpose of his life story? How am I like this person? How am I different from this person? How do good readers use the texts to make connections with themselves, other texts, and the world?

This lesson enables the teacher to help students understand that a person's life story can be categorized into pivotal moments and/or influential people.

Anticipatory Set: First, have students make lists of eight important events or people in their lives. Students should explain their reason of importance. Second, students should share their lists with their group members. Third, instruct students that they should create "categories" from their lists (e.g., family, school, country of origin, among others).

Directed Instruction: Have students connect what they have learned to what they will learn about Cesar Chavez by showing a video of the life of Cesar Chavez (various resources are available on the Internet). Have students brainstorm the "categories" they see in the film depicting his life. E.g., school, family, marriage, work, etc. and include the facts that they learned from the video on an investigative graphic organizer that students can add additional facts to throughout the unit.

Activity: Students will be divided into small groups. Each group will receive a variety of primary source documents regarding a pivotal moment (category) of Cesar Chavez's life – family influence (father, mother, and grandmother), migrant lifestyle, school and community experiences with discrimination, and union/community work. Students will review their documents, analyze them, ask/answer questions about him and determine what is the pivotal moment (category) to which these documents pertain and explain why/how they know this. They will record their findings, citing evidence from the sources to support their opinions on their investigation graphic organizer.

Assessment: Students' individual investigation graphic organizer

Lesson Three – Contando Vidas/Telling Life Stories

Why am I writing? For who? What am I trying to achieve through my writing? Who will read my writing? What will work best for my audience? How does an interview help to shape one's writing?

This lesson enables the teacher to model and introduce interview techniques for students.

Anticipatory Set: In the spirit of a Book Pass in which students view and evaluate a variety of books to choose one to read, students will have a few sentences regarding the prominent Hispanic community members that they will be interviewing to choose from. These people include a psychologist, a Manager in charge of Probation and Parole, a Manager in charge of the English Language Learner program for our school district, a director of the local Latin American Community Center, a judge, and a business owner. Students will view these and indicate who they would like to interview and who they want on their interview team.

Directed Instruction: This portion of the lesson will need to be completed over an extended amount of time. Students will be informed of the components of an interview in multiple ways: PowerPoint presentation, numerous good and bad interview fishbowl models, classmate interview practice, and additional practice outside of school.

Activity: Students will conduct their own interviews with classmates. These will be taped. Students will evaluate their performance and determine goals as to how to improve on their developing interviewing skills.

Assessment: Interview Self Rubrics