Before beginning our course of study, introduce students to the key vocabulary. Immerse them in such words as genre, theme, plot, text structure, opinion versus factual details, figurative versus literal language, dialogue, and description. Canvass your students to determine if they have prior background knowledge on these terms, along with the definition of biography.
Note: Students in Grades 2 through 5 are familiar with many genre–specific terms such as fiction, realistic fiction, non–fiction, folktales, myths, legends, memoir, and the like. They often, however, have a general notion that biography highlights a famous person's life from birth to death in chronological order. They may state that the person who writes about the life of someone else is simply an author. We want students to accurately refer to writers using appropriate literary terminology: thus, emphasize that the author of a biography is a biographer.
Engage your students by sharing that they will each try their hand at being a biographer—one who like a skilled detective finds clues and conducts research to learn about aspect of a subject's life and overall experiences. Emphasize that like narrative writing, biography is comprised of story elements: the setting (with a focus on time and place), a main character (our person of study), key events in the character's life that help to convey a particular perception of the spotlighted individual are to be included. Also stress that doing biography does not signify that the biographer must delve into every nook and cranny of the subject's life; nor does the subject need to be deemed a famous individual. The selected individual of study can be a person who has played a significant role in the lives of others or whose life proves to be special or fascinating.
Thus, the role of a good biographer is to find something that stands out about the subject's character––the attributes of which can be good or bad—and accentuate the subject's persona based on key events that have occurred in that individual's life. The biography should be written in such a way that the reader experiences the persona of the individual. Highlighting general information from each year of the life of the individual is unnecessary. In this regard, several key questions should be considered:
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– What major events occurred during the subject's childhood that helped shape some aspect of the individual's personality?
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– What descriptive words (adjectives, idioms, similes, metaphors...) can be used to best describe the target subject in the biography?
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– What event or series of events happened at other key moments in the subject's life that are relevant to revealing the individual's character?
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– How did those events shape the individual's life, helping to make the subject the man or woman he or she is today?
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– How has the individual's existence impacted your life? Impacted the lives of others? Impacted history if applicable?
In addition to the above, it is essential to zero in on specific times and places as they impact the subject's life. For example, if the subject of a biography was a Chinese immigrant—a railroad builder who lived in San Francisco during 1863, the time frame should be considered, for during that period, many Chinese workers were forced to live in segregated communities. The subject of the biography may have experienced being disenfranchised based on racial status. Thus, use of this time frame would be beneficial to help vividly depict the setting and the persona of the individual who encountered the prejudicial experience. If the subject overcame the experience, succumbed to the pressures of being hemmed in, or simply played a significant role in helping others make it through such trying circumstances, strategic use of chronological information would prove beneficial. Its inclusion will help the reader grasp how the subject's character evolved with the passing of time and circumstance, creating a vivid biographic snapshot.
