Making Connections

This week, we are studying the biography genre. We read a biography about Cesar Chavez. Today we read a biography about Marian Wright Edelman. We talked about the biography features of each. We worked as a class the first time, as we read about Cesar Chavez. We worked with groups when we looked at the features for Marian Wright Edelman, then we went over the features as a class before moving on to our next step.

Today, we compared and contrasted the texts and made connections. We started it with our original Marian Wright Edelman groups. Then as students had questions (our meta-cognitive strategy), we were able to determine what we needed to know to continue. We worked together.

The exciting part about reading, when people read, not everyone notices the same details. It makes for great discussion. There is no one "right" (or "wrong") answer. There are lots of thinking and talking that happens. If you peek at Ms. Leom's homeroom, you will see that the class agreed, both Marian and Cesar were heroes. One person throat it was because Cesar left school to support his family, another thought it was related to Cesar's work to help farm hands get fair pay. In another class, they might not decide how the subjects are alike is because they were heroes ... they may come up with something completely else!

Ms. Leom's homeroom

Mr. Greninger's homeroom

This is how we make connections to the biography genre.