Objective
My philosophy of teaching is to use content to teach students the critical skills that are necessary for success in college and beyond. The content of this unit is meant to gain student interest in the compelling story of a woman who was both a product of her time and rebel against it, a woman whose portrait has been painted and repainted beyond recognition. I want students to be able to define biography, describe the components of biography (timeline, both contextual and personal primary and secondary sources, and the organization and argument of the biography itself), and explain the challenges facing biographers. I also want them to know the story of Plath's life insofar as it helps them to practice the craft of the biographer. This knowledge of Plath will further help them as we delve into the archetypal units throughout the year.
I want the students to be able to do many things at the end of this unit. I want them to improve their literacy in multiple forms including timelines, text, images, film, and more. I want them to always to see the source as a human creation with reasons for the choices made and to analyze those choices. I want students to practice making inferences and challenge themselves to defend their inferences with evidence from the source. I want their inferences to drive their curiosity, generate high-level questions, and motivate them to seek the answers on their own. I see great value in the biographical challenge of defining self and subject simultaneously.
Additionally, this project aims to make students more critical readers of both their own work and the work of professional biographers. Students who work to gain an understanding of Sylvia Plath's childhood by analyzing the events of her life, her journals, letters, and poetry, are better able to take on a biographer attempting the same task. By analyzing sources, students are also preparing to gather the archival and oral sources and analyze it for their the year long biography assignment.
The act of writing and revising is the final aspect of this year long biography project. The students will become biographers themselves. They will use steps similar to those presented in the primer unit to write the biography of their subject. They will analyze and make conjectures about a basic timeline of major events and interview their subjects for insights into the pivotal moments as well as the personal and public context surrounding those moments. They will research to gain context and grapple with the sources that require them to solve the puzzle of how best to represent a life honestly and engagingly.
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