Introduction
The numbers eleven, twelve, and thirteen seem small; and in fact, they are. When compared to the number sixty-eight or even twenty-six, they stand as "less than" in value. My sixth grade students are eleven, twelve, and thirteen years of age. In the grand scope of many adult eyes, their lives appear to be tiny, barely beginning; and in fact, they are. But I argue that even with a life so small these young students still have tales worthy of telling.
At the start of middle school, a new step in a child's education, a right of passage crossing from fifth grade graduation into the doors of a secondary school, my students find themselves in a complicated mix. They are at the final stages of childhood, in the middle of adolescence, and can eagerly smell the thrill of being a teenager. At eleven years old their lives are full. They talk incessantly, they form relationships, they hang out with friends, they go through an array of changing emotions on a weekly, daily, and hourly basis. They seek to be loved, liked, validated, and approved. They wish to please, but also rebel. They are starting to sort out who they are and who they will become, and they have stories to tell about it all.
At twenty-six, I find myself in the unique position of guiding my students in uncovering their character. Each year I watch the character of my students bud, morph, waver, grow, and begin to solidify. The well-known children's author Roald Dahl was sixty-eight when he first published his autobiography Boy: Tales of Childhood. As he recalls and writes the memories of his life with striking childlike detail, readers see the character of a young boy begin to form. It is the moments of childhood, current and past, the actions and decisions of those very full eleven, twelve, and thirteen year old lives, that impact character. For my students, it is these moments that comprise the autobiographies of their lives right now and paint the portrait of who they are.
My curriculum unit, "Understanding Character Development through the Use of Autobiography," emphasizes the complicated mix in which my students stand—child, adolescent, teenager—and the defining moments that characterize who they are. The unit is designed for the middle school classroom and can be adapted for grades six through eight. Throughout the course of a month, students will read and write in the genre of autobiography. Using Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl as a primary mentor text, students will explore the principals of autobiography and use Dahl's writing to analyze character development within several of the short chapters. Students will examine the techniques that Dahl employs as he brings to life the characters of his past and use his text as an inspiration for writing their own autobiographical vignettes that center on a theme of childhood.
The goal of my unit is to ultimately have my students arrive at a view of autobiography as a portrait of a person's character, as a story or the compilation of several small stories that have the power to show who a person is. As students explore this concept, they will master the skill of characterization and acquire techniques used in characterization that can be applied to their own writing.
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