Entry 11: Using the Biographical Genre in my Classroom

 How Can I Use the Biographical Genre in my Classroom?

    After reading about the biographical genre in Tompkins (2012) and participating in the biographical genre presentation I was left wondering how I might personally use this genre in my own classroom. I know that the biographical genre is important to learn and know about and I also know that it can be very engaging to write about yourself or step into someone else's footsteps. I feel as though I did not do enough explicit teaching or exploring of this genre with my students this year. I want to change this for the end of this school year and for future years. One strategy for bringing this genre into the classroom that the presentation used was the "Me Quilt." I particularly enjoyed engaging in this with the mentor text that I brought to class. I believe that this is something that I will have my students do based on themselves and I thought since they will already know how to do it, that they could do a person we learn about as well. we learn about Native Americans, Colonists, and the American Revolution which all involve people that they could make a quilt about. 

    I was also thinking that during writing workshop I could have students write a personal narrative or an autobiography about themselves or their family. I think it would be important to explain the differences between a personal narrative and an autobiography. I would explain that a personal narrative is one experience and it explains how that event affected the writer. I would also tell my students that an autobiography spans a writers life usually and tells about the important events in their lives. I also like the idea of making a biography poster, and teaching students about what a biography is. I think it is important to teach them the difference between autobiography and biography because many students get the two confused. I would explain that a biography is about one person but written by someone else. I think the activities that I plan to use will help to facilitate the learning of these types of biographical writing. At the end of the school year, we do a poetry unit and I could see myself using the bio-poems to teach poetry and the biographical genre. 

    Lastly, I think that I could incorporate the biographical genre into my read aloud selections and mentor texts. I think it is important for my students to hear me talk about the genre through reading aloud and providing examples through mentor texts. While thinking about good mentor texts and books to read aloud, I think my mind is still thinking about the end of the presentation that focused on critical literacy. I liked how this part of the presentation made us question what biographical texts that we provide students with and what this teaches them. I think it is important to make sure that through our text selection that every voice is heard, diversity is present, and not every story is someone overcoming obstacles and succeeding. Students deserve to see ordinary biographies and autobiographies as well as people that did not overcome their obstacles or didn't have any obstacles. This is something that I will consider as I select texts for my classroom and I am appreciative that this was included in the presentation.