How to Write a Biography Lesson
A biography tells the story of a person's life. Biographies can be used to lure reluctant readers into reading for fun as they read about their favorite movie or sports stars. Biographies can interest students in topics formerly considered boring, such as when readers want to learn more about the historical era the subject lived in. And of course biographies of friends are a great way to interest students in nonfiction writing.
Instructions
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Choose your objective. You need to look over your district's literature-based standards and objectives and choose the biography-oriented one on which you want to focus.
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Prepare your students. Read lots of biographies to the class (see Resources) and discuss their characteristics. The "Picture Book Biography" series has a lot of great books for elementary school students. Make a class chart of the characteristics of biographies.
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Plan the activity to reinforce the objective. Some great biography activities include: writing a biography of a friend, creating a version of Trivial Pursuit using the lives of those the class has read about, researching famous people of students' choice on the Internet. Or you can make this into a scavenger hunt or role-playing game focused on famous (or imaginary) moments in history with students portraying notable people.
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Decide how you will assess the students. You might just want to take notes on how the students handle the activity, or you could develop a rubric for their projects. You can also grade scavenger hung papers or reports.
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Tips & Warnings
Use this lesson to take advantage of student interests; let your fighters study military figures, let your drama queens study royalty and so on.
Don't let on that some people think biographies are boring. The more excited you are the more excited they will be.
