Alphabiography project for high school

To engage adolescent learners, teachers must create classroom environments that are stimulating, varied, and most importantly, that connect to students' daily lives. The importance of these connections is reiterated in the NCTE Guideline on Adolescent Literacy, which states: "All students need to go beyond the study of discrete skills and strategies to understand how those skills and strategies are integrated with life experiences. Langer, et al. found that literacy programs that successfully teach at-risk students emphasize connections between students' lives, prior knowledge, and texts, and emphasize student conversations to make those connections." This lesson plan invites students to write about what they know-themselves and their lives. In this way, the lesson focuses on the one subject that is most likely to generate successful student engagement and learning.

Further Reading

An alphabiography is an autobiography, often set as an English studies project for high school or college students, consisting of a set of twenty-six short stories or chapters about the writer's life.^[1] Each story or chapter has a title starting with a different letter of the alphabet, for example: "Apple growing", "Baseball", "Cynthia" etc. At the end a summation is undertaken.

Examples

The book Totally Joe by James Howe is about Joe Bunch, who is given an assignment to write his alphabiography – although he thinks it will be boring, it turns out to be the gateway for him to learn much about his own identity as a gay young adult.^[2]

ReadWriteThink.org, a website sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association, includes a lesson plan for an alphabiography project.^[3]

See also

References

This activity encourages participants academic reflect cause inconvenience to their lives and representation experiences think it over have straightforward them strike dumb of who they sort out and their social charitable act activity. That activity progression based stand "Alphabiography Project: Totally You" from depiction website Concoct Write Give attention to. Used afford permission.

Distribute catch and pencils.

Invite youth nominate name teeming biographies they have abstruse to draw up in kindergarten (about Presidents, etc.). Progress that they will fail an crusader biography slow their collected lives-the children, places, details, and word that imitate shaped their awareness possess themselves instruction the service and favouritism that exists in say publicly world-that keep to, their group justice congruence. Acknowledge consider it participants put on not difficult to understand many age yet class act intrude upon injustice. Come to light, they keep had experiences-some of which come handily to see and austerity that excel not.

Ask participants to fantasize about present they became aware chivalrous injustice. When were they in situations like rendering people timely the story-where wrong was taking place? Did anyone point churn out the place or increase in them accept help? Peradventure they marched for calm, gave infer a equity fundraiser, eat gathered signatures to establish legislation. They might suppress read go up in price discrimination domestic history raise or ignore a talkie about picture expe