Biography Unit

Biography Unit has been updated!

Biography means "writing about life." In this complete reading unit, readers learn only about a variety of notable subjects - their achievements, impact, struggles, and the world in which they live. Students will make arguments about the significance of the person's accomplishments and to extract life lessons. 

The resource is organized around TWELVE lessons or big ideas of biographies. Each big idea has the following: 

•  Session Synopsis (detailed lesson plan) 
• Anchor Chart Task (independent or group work) 

I have also included a bibliography and an overview of how I organize my reading block.

Biographies, Readers' Workshop, and Technology Infusion

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Biography means "writing about life." There are many reasons to introduce students to biographies.

1. Biographies provide a historical perspective of people who braved challenges in a vastly different time or social period.
2. Biographies provide life lessons gleaned from others' life experiences and behaviours. 
3. Biographies create empathy and understanding of others. The story of someone who may have lived in a different era or with a different background exposes students to things they may never experience. Reading another’s story helps them to appreciate their differences or find comfort in our sameness. 
4. Biographies extend students' view into the future. Hearing about what others have accomplished despite their circumstance encourages them to dream. It gives them hope that they can meet the challenges that come their way. 

There is no shortage of biographies written for elementary students. As the students read biographies, there are many web tools and apps to help students delve into the lives of fascinating people.

ThingLink allows the creation of interactive images by adding video, music, and text to uploaded images. Take pictures and video of events within the historical era which impacted the subject's life. Once media has been collected, hotspot areas on the ThingLink to provide more information.

Blabberize
Blabberize is a web tool which creates a talking picture of person’s face. Upload a picture of the subject of the biography and add a hotspot to move with the recording. After customizing the picture, record a short biography assuming the role of the historical figure.


Timeline Interactive

This interactive from Read Write Think creates a graphical representation of a subject's life by displaying items sequentially along a line.

Adobe Spark Post
Adobe Spark Post is a free online and mobile graphic design app. Create beautiful images that help tell the subject of a biography's story by highlighting infamous quotes.

 

Bio Cube
This interactive tool from Read Write Think allows students to develop an outline of a person whose biography they have just read. Specific prompts ask students to describe a person's significance, background, and personality.



View a detailed unit of study on Biographies. Students will examine the big ideas of narrative and expository biographies and develop skills and strategies to enhance reading fluency and comprehension. Students will explore cause-and-effect, sequence, language cues and conventions, visualization, determining importance, and synthesis.

Biographies

Biography means "writing about life." In my newest unit of study entitled Biographies, readers will apply their knowledge about reading narratives, and apply these understandings to a different structure called narrative nonfiction. Readers will read to learn not only about the significant character, but also the group of people that person represents and the groups of people that person impacted. That is, readers read biographies not only to learn about specific famous figures, but also to learn about the world in which they live and to extract life lessons. 

The unit is divided into three bends: 

1. Connect their knowledge of fictional story structures to focus on the deep comprehension and synthesis of story elements of narrative nonfiction.
2. Examine the unifying idea or message behind a life story, learning that a biography is often a commentary on society at large. 
3. Apply their understandings about biographies to ease them into understanding the structures and patterns of other forms of narrative nonfiction. 

The primary goal of this unit of study is to help students become stronger readers. The main objective is not to learn content, but rather to learn how to read the genre of biography. Reading skills, rather than the details of a remarkable person’s life, are the emphasis. Readers will use story grammar to determine importance, to synthesize, and to analyze critically across long stretches of text, ultimately growing theories about them.

Throughout the twelve sessions, readers develop the ability to find connections, explain the meaning of unexpected actions, and make arguments about the significance of the person's accomplishments or life activities.  

I hope you enjoy the study of Biographies as much as my students!