Anna K. Bartow
These writing assignments and activities are intended to supplement the discussions which I outlined earlier.
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITING PROJECT
Lesson One:
Objective
Students will talk to relatives and friends in order to find out about and write about the earliest part of their life.
Instructions
Write a description of your birth.
Include: Who was present at your birth.
What you looked like.
Where the birth took place.
What the delivery was like. How your family felt—parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc.
Any other details that you can come up with:
Optional (How you felt about being born!!)
For this assignment in particular consider writing or phoning your relatives whom you do not see on a regular basis. They will be able to give you interesting information and different points of view.
Lesson Two:
Objective
Students will examine and write about one of their earliest memories.
Instructions
Describe your earliest memory. Concentrate on feelings and mental pictures as well as on the event itself. Let the memories flow. Only you will be able to decide which is your earliest memory. You may wish to choose a different early memory.
Lesson Three:
Objective
Students will consider and write about the impact a trip can have on their life.
Instructions
Describe a trip that you took that affected your life in a significant way. It can be a trip across town or a trip to a faraway place. Describe the trip and the way in which it affected you significantly.
Lesson Four:
Objective
Students will reflect back on what they were like in the years before puberty. They will also work on incorporating figurative language into their writing.
Instructions
Describe an event in your childhood that caused you much happiness or much pain. Think of the years before puberty, five to ten years old. Describe what led up to the event, the event itself, and the after-effects. Describe your feelings at the time. Make use of similes, metaphors, and personification when appropriate. Note Maya Angelou’s use of figurative language:
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Similes:
My mother was “like a pretty kite that floated just above my head. If I liked I could pull it in to me by saying I had to go to the toilet or by starting a fight with Bailey.”
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C.B
. p. 54.
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“For nearly a year, I sopped around the house, the store, the school and the church, like an old biscuit, dirty and inedible.”
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C.B
. p. 77
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Metaphors
: “Mother was a blithe chick nuzzling around the large, solid dark hen. The sounds they made had a rich inner harmony. Momma’s deep, slow voice lay under my mother’s rapid peeps and chirps.”
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C.B
. p. 171
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“I hefted the burden of pregnancy at sixteen onto my own shoulders where it belonged. Admittedly, I staggered under the weight.”
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C.B
. p. 242
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Personification
: “The Depression must have it the white section of Stamps with cyclonic impact, but it seeped into the Black area slowly, like a thief with misgivings.”
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C.B.
p. 41
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“After a minute or two, silence would rush into the room from its hiding place because I had eaten up all the sounds.”
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C.B
. p. 73
Lesson Five
:
Objective
Students will reflect on their teenage years. They will continue to incorporate figurative language into their writing.
Instructions
Describe an event in your teenage years that affected you in a significant way. Think of the years after puberty, eleven until now. Describe what led up to the event, the event itself, and the after-effects. Describe your feelings at the time. Make use of similes, metaphors, and personification when appropriate.
Lesson Six
:.
Objective
Students will consider their future. (Note to the teacher. This assignment takes a fanciful turn.) I enjoy including it because it often produces some surprising and creative results. I like to challenge students to look ahead into the future especially if it is in combination with the past and the present.)
Instructions
Think about one or more important experiences that could happen to you in the future. The experience can be something that you
wish
would happen or that you
fear
would happen. Write about it, and consider how it could change the course of your life for better or for worse.
At this point the teacher will have six separate compositions to return to the students. The final writing project below can follow straight chronological time order, or it can focus on the use of time distortions. The teacher who chooses to work with students on time distortions can have students make several different starts to their final autobiography. Foreshadowing can be accomplished by students starting the autobiography with a memory or an event that foretells in some way a later happening. Flashbacks can be accomplished by students starting the autobiography in the present or future and flashing back to earlier time periods. If the students have the six compositions all together in one packet, it makes it quite easy for them to visualize how to go about arranging and rearranging time periods until they achieve the desired effect. The packet of six compositions lead to the final project for this unit.
Lesson Seven
:
YOUR OWN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Objective
The student will write an autobiography incorporating figurative language and the concept of time and time distortions.
Instructions
Reflect on your own past, present, and future. Write your own autobiography.
Reread your six compositions. Mix up the order and think about different points in your life when you could start telling your story. Do you want to start telling the story as a teenager looking back on your life or as a child who then grows up as the story is being told. Think about whose “voice” you are using to tell the story. Will you incorporate flashbacks, flashforwards and foreshadowing?
Talk to your parents, other relatives, friends, and teachers. Think about your past and present experiences which have affected your sense of identity and maturity. Consider also future experiences which could affect your sense of identity and maturity. Who are the people that you look up to and the laws or the rules that you go by? Who are your “gods”?
If you wish, include photographs, illustrations, or other relevant pictures or papers. For example, you can use a xeroxed copy of your birth certificate, awards, or your driver’s license. You might even have a passport.)
Use figurative and symbolic language when appropriate Write neatly using correct sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling.