Curated OER
A Year in Review: The Memoir
If you are planning a unit on memoir and autobiographical narrative, you should consider this resource. Using Internet research skills, pupils review works by James Frey and Henry David Thoreau. In response to these works, learners...
Teach with Movies
Teaching Students to Write a Narrative
Encourage narrative writing with a clever exercise. Class members watch episodes from movies and describe what happened to a character, including details about the setting, plot, and characters. Writers then craft a narrative about a...
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A Great Beginning
Check out this detailed resource for some beginning of the year activities. After examining examples, class members uses the computer lab to create a personal brochure enhanced with clip art or photos to introduce themselves to the...
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Writing From Experience (Grades 7-12)
Students brainstorm in preparation for writing an expressive essay. They review their responses to 'Writing from Experience' and write notes and brainstorm other ideas or details for their essays. They take turns illustrating their life...
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Writing and Scholarship Planning For College-Bound Students: Brainstorming Time
Pupils examine the process of scholarship and college essay writing. They develop a list of key words and concepts, complete handouts, and complete an outline of an essay.
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Persona in Autobiography
A talkative old man? A naïve believer in Human Perfectibility? A Sage? Who is this guy, anyway? The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin launches a study of the way Franklin uses structure, style, and purpose, as well as different...
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Reliving History Through Writing
Students read a first hand account of John F. Kennedy's assassination. They write an essay describing how a world or national event affected them.
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Biographical Poems
Students write a biographical poem about themselves. They observe a teacher-led demonstration, write an autobiographical poem and a biographical poem about a famous person using a template form, and display the poems side-by-side.
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Celebrating Women: Toni Morrison
How authors address issues of their societies is addressed in this very detailed lesson plan. After researching Toni Morrison and her work, groups create a dramatization based on a scene from one of Morrison’s novels and act it out....
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A Mirror into History
Are we really all that different from people in the past? First, learners of all ages write an autobiographical poem. Then, they research the lives of historical figures. They use the same format that they used to write their own poem to...
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The Story of My Life
Students complete autobiographical writing assignments throughout the school year that they save and rewrite to put into a published book during the last month of class. They include photographs, drawings and mementos of their lives in...
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Autobiographical Talking Sticks
Students begin the lesson by developing a map of their lives. Individually, they take this information and write a personal narrative. They create symbols to represent the various times in their lives and introduce them into their...
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Organizing Doesn't Have to Be a Puzzle
Learners review writing process, prepare cluster maps, organize events of their lives on an outline, and utilize graphic organizers to write autobiographical essays.
Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Need a model for character education? Benjamin Franklin presents himself as in a constant state of striving to become the man he hoped to be, making his autobiography is far more accessible to learners than those of people who consider...
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Language Arts: Biography and Autobiography
Learners examine autobiographies and biographies through a series of reading and writing exercises. By writing journals during this semester-long course, they improve writing skills and discover their own voice. Among other activities,...
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Language Arts: Learning About the Self
Tenth graders explore the self through a study of autobiographies. By writing daily in their journals, they improve their writing skills and write reflection pieces at the end of the year. Through a series of writing assignments, 10th...
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Autobiography: Maya Angelou
Learners study the concepts of autobiography, biography, and fiction as literary genres. They read, study, and analyze Maya Angelou's autobiographical writings in terms of what she intended to accomplish by her writings. They develop and...
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I Am What i Am
Learners reflect, through autobiographical writing, on events in their lives that they feel most shaped their personal identities.
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Photographic Memories
Explore how photographs can represent a whole story to a viewer. Middle schoolers work on narrative writing techniques in this lesson, focusing on photographs from the New York Times to write first-person descriptive narratives....
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All About Me
Using technology, learners create and deliver a multimedia autobiographical presentation to present to the class. This ambitious lesson has learners use a variety of sources both old and new; magazines, poster board, the Internet, and...
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Baseball Stories, Cards and Interviews
Everyone can be an MVP! Young learners create their own baseball cards about themselves in this autobiographical instructional activity. They use information about their lives to create a baseball trading card. They make flash cards...
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House on Mango Street
Students complete a guided reading study and autobiographical essay for Sandra Cisneros' House on Mango Street. For this literary analysis lesson, students read the novel, complete novel response activities, book review worksheets, and...
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A Life Lived Well
Students write poems based on words and phrases found in an obituatuary. They write autobiographical obituaries that imagine their own lives and future accomplishments.
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Communities in Crisis Lesson 1: Primary Source? What is That?
Distinguish between primary and secondary source documents using the theme of philanthropy. Middle schoolers discuss Anne Frank: The Diary of Young Girl as a way to study the past using a primary source. Then they investigate how to...