Biography Genre Kick-off

Spring is the time for big, bold new undertakings. I worked really hard to make sure I wrapped up all of my ongoing units of study prior to spring break so that we could jump right into some new units upon our return. Here is what is going on in my classroom right now.

This past week I kicked off our biography genre study in my classroom. Well, not really IN my classroom. We were in the gym at my school along with the other 3rd grade teachers and our amazing specials teachers. Each third grade teacher took on the role of a notable person in history by dressing like them, carrying some artifacts that represented them and then answering predetermined questions about the notable as if they were that person. The students were then able to make a guess as to which notable person we were impersonating.

It was a riot and the kids LOVE to see their teachers dressing the part! I was Martha Graham, one of the pioneers of modern dance because dance was my minor in college and it is very important to me. It was definitely a tough one for the kids to guess. All of the third grade teachers I work with each took on a content area such as artist/composer or politician or author, etc. and did 15 minute book talks for each class. It was such a fun and engaging way to introduce the biography genre that we would be studying to the kids. After our big kick-off, we created some anchor charts to complete throughout our study (seen below). Just in case you can't tell from my handy dandy drawing, these are books. On the New Learning chart, we are adding important vocabulary words as well.

This introduction serves to model for kids what their final product will be after they have researched a notable person in history. Once the students had an idea about this big culminating project they would be taking on (we call it Night of the Notables-kids study a notable person and then dress as them and answer questions about them for their families at a celebration in addition to writing a research report), they took home a list of the notables that we have resources for in our library and were able to list their top five people they wanted to study. As a third grade team, we divided up our resources (trying to avoid too many multiple notables across the grade level while ensuring readability for kids) and gave the kids their notables. They were thrilled as most kids got one of their top five choices!

This past week, after the kids received their books, they spent their independent reading time just reading...being totally immersed in their biography and trying to get the big picture of who their notable was. Next week we will really dive into our research when we embark on the note taking process. I can't wait!

The brunt of this project is research-skills based but I wanted to make sure that the application phase of learning was present in this process this year so my class is going to be creating a mini-book stating why their admire their notable and then what notable qualities they themselves posses. And...just to add some more technology to their lives, we are creating Glogs on our notables. I have imported photos of each notable so that students can add clipart images to their online posters as well as some fast and interesting facts. We will post individual Glogs on our class site for families to view.

In a nutshell...this is how the third grade team I work with teaches the biography genre in conjunction with writing content reports and hitting a lot of our Social Studies standards as well.