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!

Super Biographies

For the past couple weeks, we have been taking part in a biography unit in my classroom. After reading a variety of different biographies and learning about their characteristics, I shared with my students that they would each be writing a biography of their own.

I took an idea that I found from Amy Lemons over at Step Into 2nd Grade with Mrs. Lemons in which her students worked in groups to write biographies on various teachers in the building, and tweaked it a bit to work for my kiddos! My students interviewed the dual language and bilingual teachers in our building, as I wanted the project to be done in Spanish. Also, I thought this would be a great experience for them to get to know the teachers in the program that they have already had or will have in the future!

Before our big "interview" day, we worked to brainstorm questions that we felt fit into the 4 key parts of a biography- (childhood, adult life, how the person has influenced others, other interesting facts). Then the students were presented with their "interviewee". My- how excited they all were! I wrote the name of the teacher they would be interviewing along with the time of their interview the following day on a post-it note. I had the students stick the post-it notes to their tables to be left on as a reminder for the following day.

I will say that interview day was a little nutty- simply because students were in and out of the room all day long. The staff members came for the interviews on their individual planning times (which was so wonderful of them all), and took about 15 minutes with the students to complete their interview. I would say if you plan to try this, make sure you make no big plans for the day in regards to teaching something you want all of the students to be there for! We did a lot of reviewing/projects, etc. The post-its were extremely helpful, too, as the kids were very aware of when their special time was a comin!

After the interview day, we spent the next week using the information we had gathered to write our paragraphs on each topic. We spent one day working on each paragraph as a class (4 days in all), then on the 5th day, we had a big ole' peer editing party!

This leads us to this past week in which we have been working on our final drafts. The students had to rewrite each paragraph for their final copy as well as create a picture to go along with their bio. To make the picture, I had our tech. teacher print out all of the teachers' school photos and then the kids used construction and scrapbook paper for the bodies. They turned out super cute!

(I'd totally wear this outfit to school ;))

(Love this one. She made her such a fashionista. Look at the bow and belt!)

I apologize there is a glare in some of the pictures. I think some of them may have been a little glue happy :).

Here is an example of one of the paragraphs inside. We just used your run of the mill notebook paper!

Hope you guys have a great rest of your weekend! Don't forget to make sure to enter my giveaway as well! Click on the link to go to the post!