Biographies+Lesson


 * Caitlin Tepe **
 * Auto/Biography Lesson **

I chose to use biographies that had an appropriate Guided Reading level for the range of students that I work with. I used Book Wizard, part of Scholastic’s website. Here, you can search for books by grade level, Fountas and Pinnell’s guided reading level, Developmental Reading Assessment level, or Lexile level which makes it incredibly easy to find an appropriate book regardless of the leveling curriculum you use. I chose biographies because I often have my students write mini autobiographies about themselves as a get to know you activity for myself and their new group members in speech therapy at the beginning of the school year. Many of my younger students are unfamiliar with biographies and my older students benefit from refreshers about biographies. We use some of these leveled readers that I borrow from their classrooms to introduce biographies, what they are about, and the information that they commonly provide as a way to help them decide what information would be important to include in their own biography.


 * __ Books __**
 * Walker, P. (2001). // Helen Keller //. New York: Children's Press.
 * Level F biography about Hellen Keller’s life
 * Walker, P. (2001). // Tiger Woods //. New York: Children's Press.
 * Level F biography about Tiger Woods and his golfing career
 * McCormick, L. W. (2007). // Michael Jordan //. New York: Children's Press.
 * Level G biography about Michael Jordan’s success as a basketball player
 * Mara, W. (2003). // Henry Ford //. New York: Children's Press.
 * Level I biography about the founder of the popular car brand
 * Mara, W. (2002). // George Washington //. New York: Children's Press.
 * Level J biography about the life of the first president of the US
 * Rau, D. M. (2003). // Dr. Seuss //. New York: Children’s Press
 * Level J biography about the life and work of the popular children’s author
 * Millender, D. H. (1986). // Martin Luther King, Jr: Young man with a dream //. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks.
 * Level O biography of the life and death of the celebrated civil rights activist
 * Gutman, B. (2001). // Venus & Serena: The grand slam Williams sisters //. New York: Scholastic Inc.
 * Level R biography about the talented tennis sisters
 * Wade, M. D. (1992). //Amelia Earhart: Flying for adventure//. Brookfield, Conn: Millbrook Press.
 * Level S biography of the legendary female pilot
 * Colbert, D. (2009). // Abraham Lincoln //. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks.
 * Level V biography of the president who fought for the end of slavery

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 * __ Websites: __**
 * This is a cool computerized graphic that categorizes important information needed for a biography. Questions such as who are you writing about, when did they live, where did they live, major life events, personality traits, and cultural/social significance allow the student to organize their information in a different and engaging way. The questions also encourage deeper thinking and go farther than just typical factual information you find in a biography. The great thing is that this cube is also formatted for mysteries, fiction, and create your own so it can be used with many writing genres.
 * This is a great resource for nonfiction books based on interest categories like Sports and the Olympics, Detectives and Explorers, and Passport to the World. Within these categories are many biographies that students can pick from along with an age range they are appropriate for. Both teachers and parents can benefit from this resource to find interesting and engaging books about high interest topics for their students and children to facilitate practice with reading nonfiction and writing about nonfiction. The books are leveled by age and have great suggestions for how to read aloud in a way that engages your students and children the most.
 * Using the connection to the Barack Obama book selected, this website is a great way to get more in depth information about a person. This would also be a good resource when teaching biographies for people involved in current events. It’s a good way to show that biographies and autobiographies don’t always have to be about a historical figure from the past. History is happening every day and biographies and autobiographies can be written about living people (which is what we will do in our get to know you lesson!)
 * This is a wonderful short video about how to create a biography and some things to think about that make a person interesting or important.

[] http://gardenofpraise.com/ibdadams.htm
 * Great for the older students, this outline breaks down the steps and information needed to write an informative and interesting biography. There are brainstorming suggestions, links to additional research resources, as well as drafting and revising help
 * This website has nice mini-biographies of historical figures. I think these short biographies would work nicely for an in therapy activity. (Jean Campbell).