This unit explores the use of biography as a vehicle for helping students gain a working and personal knowledge of black history. Students will gain an historical perspective about black life (they will be able to use biographies and key in on significant events in history), they will gain a flavor for the particular time the biography was written in, and hopefully be able to make comparisons of events that have happened in their lives with events that have happened in the lives of other people. At the beginning of the course students will begin keeping a journal in which they must make daily entries. Once they begin reading autobiographies they can observe the style of various authors, and perhaps try writing in a different voice themselves by paying attention to the sentence structure and vocabulary used by others.
(Recommended for 9th-12th grades U.S. History and 9th-12th grades Black History)
Key Words
Afro-American Biography History Black Literature Writing Instruction Autobiography
