Biography

This week, we are studying the biography genre. We learned that most biographies share some basic features:
- hook
- birth date and place
- childhood and family
- character traits
- impact
- quote

We started our study by reading about Cesar Chavez. Ms. Leom modeled finding the features in the text.

Then, we read about Marian Wright Edelman. Students worked with partners to find the features in the text. We reviewed our learning together as a class.

We compared the Cesar and Marian biographies.

Next, we read a longer biography, about Squanto. Our goal was to read Squanto with a partner. We reviewed the features of a biography. We listed the features on the board. Each one was assigned a sticky note color. Students read with partners and took notes on the sticky notes with their examples.

Afterwards, as a class, we could look at the examples from the text students shared, and Ms. Leom could see what details we needed clarified, and what areas we needed to develop. For example many of the groups could identify the birthdate, but didn't record the birth place. Two of the pairs thought Squanto was born and grew up in Europe. We could model returning to the text and how we clarify our learning.

Ms. Leom also realized that when students identified character traits, they needed more support in going back to the text and identifying examples to support their thinking.

 Finally, we wrapped up our biography learning by adding biographies and notes to our Flex Journals.

We will continue to read biographies. Identifying the features and studying specific genres helps us go deeper into the text and better understand what we read.