Bountiful Bios!

We have been working hard over the past few weeks on a biography unit. We studied the characteristics of this type of text, work to identify examples and information learned by reading several bios as a class and in small groups, and recently culiminated our unit by authoring our own super bios!

To gather information for our biographies we went straight to the source - the dual language staff of our building. I did this activity for the first time last year and it was a hit! Not only does it give my students the opportunity to gather info. from a primary source, but also, it gives them the opportunity to get to know teachers that they have had or may have in the future a little better! Plus it enabled my kiddos to do all of their interviewing in Spanish!

Here are their final pieces hanging in the pod (this is my building's lingo for the area in between a group of classrooms ;)).

And a few up close...

Finally, to give my students continued opportunities to read and reflect on a variety of biographies, I created a biography reflection page that has been added to their "Read to Self" center for students to utilize post reading a new biography. After the student hands it in, I have been placing them all in a binder in our student created book bin in the classroom so that others can read the facts they have learned about a variety of important people as well....and maybe it will even lead them to want to pick up the bio themselves!

Here is an example of the reflection sheet completed by one of my kiddos (she went a little above and beyond I must say!):

I photocopy my reflection sheet with Spanish on one side and English on the other so the student can choose which side to use based on the language of the biography they read. Both can be downloaded for free by clicking on the image of the sheet below.  Font by Kimberly Geswein and border by Creative Clips. Enjoy!