Content Objectives
In the story Horton Hears a Who! author Dr. Seuss wrote, "A person's a person, no matter how small." This story features a large elephant trying to protect small creatures. One of the primary messages of the story is that everyone is important. Thinking about the subject of biography, the central idea I can teach my students is that everyone's story is important. By reading biographies about people throughout history, they will begin to learn important things, events, and people from the world they live in. By writing autobiographies and sharing them they will learn mutual appreciation and respect for their peers. Students will be encouraged to dig deeper and ask questions to better understand the thoughts and motives of a historical person, while reserving judgment of them. They will also do the same exercise of discussing personal things about their peers while encouraging their peers to share aspects about themselves. This helps create great readers and writers who think critically and make connections to things they read and observe.
Learning to respect others while asking questions to explore things deeper aligns language arts standards with social studies standards. I will use the knowledge I gain in seminar from reading biographies written for adults, but I will apply it when reading second-grade "friendly" biographies as read-aloud books to help my students learn about historical figures in the context of reading, writing, science, social studies, and math. I will use biographies to introduce topics in the various units that I have to teach.
In social studies, second grade students are expected to "understand how various sources provide information about the past." When we study history, I will share The Picture Book of George Washington, The Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr., and The Picture Book of Christopher Columbus with my students (along with picture biography books). When we study the "relationship between sound and vibrating objects" in science, I will read The Value of Giving: The Story of Beethoven where students can learn about how Beethoven was able to feel the music even though he was beginning to go deaf. When we learn about money in math integrated with financial literacy in social studies where students are expected to "understand basic economic concepts" I will read The Value of Saving: The Story of Benjamin Franklin. My goal for students is to have a wide knowledge of people who have helped to shape our country, our music, our literature, our discoveries, our problems, our solutions, our arts, our sports, etc. By reading biographies and connecting people to various topics second grade students learn about, they will begin to understand and be able to make deeper connections to the big ideas and vocabulary they need to know in second grade. Students will be able to observe changes over time and how varying perspectives can understand and interpret the same thing.
In addition to reading, my students engage in writing for various purposes throughout the school year. Currently we teach non-fiction writing in the spring and the students create an "All About Me" book using various text features that they learn about in reading. I'm going to develop my curriculum unit to introduce "All About Me" books at the start of a school year. I learn so much about my students through reading their "All About Me" books. I want to find a way to introduce them to autobiography where they can use the craft and principles employed in this genre and apply it to their own writing. Then (if there's time in the calendar) students will create a biography of a peer in the classroom. They will compare their biography to the autobiography that was written in order to learn the big idea that not everything that is written tells the whole story. This exercise will particularly highlight how individual authors tell or write stories in different ways.
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