The Biography Project Strategies in Brief
The biography unit established a framework for how to approach writing another person's life story. In Nigel Hamilton's How to do Biography he identifies the stages that one should follow when writing a taking on the task of writing biography. The first phase is "agenda." Although this project has defined the agenda on some levels, I still believe it would be a helpful place to start. What do you want to know about the person you are interviewing and why do you want to know it?
It established the helpfulness and limitations of a timeline and allowed for practice in creating questions from inferences that could be used by my students to interview their subject. Every week during the remaining units time will be spent learning how to interview and how to take notes during the interview. We will have student-to-student mock interviews as well as models of me interviewing another staff member. Students will critique the interview using a rubric and much time will be given to reflection and practice.
Research and reading skills will be used to find the context of the life of the subject. Students will use the library to find books and database sources as well as combing the archives of the home of the subject (with permission of course) for materials that would help add layers to the story. Students will be encouraged to use primary and secondary sources (journal articles or monographs) to understand the societal forces that influenced the subject.
Once the data has been collected it must be organized into categories for the sake of argument. One example might be the categories of "ahead of her time" and "a product of her time." The bulk of sources in the categories help push the student to an argument and perhaps section titles. Other organizational choices then arise. Do you tell the entire story chronologically or do you start with a defining moment? Do you tell the whole story? Will it be in first person or third person?
Once a working argument is formed, the writing can begin. Here Hermione Lee again informs the challenge. "Biography's narrative tactics–often barely noticed as the facts unroll and the story moves on–set the tone and create a point of view." 15 Students will work to consider both tone and point of view when writing their biography. Multiple revisions will provide opportunities for individual meetings with students to read their work aloud for a better understanding of problems of clarity and tone.
The final project will provide the students with greater options beyond a narrative paper. Students can create the biography through a video documentary, a Storycorps-style podcast, a spoken word performance, or turning the biographical narrative into a more fictionalized form.
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