Entry 10:"Bless, Address, or Press" Part 2

 For the second part of "Bless, Address, or Press", I was looking through everyone's blog and one comment from McKenzie's blog really stuck out to me. It came from her latest blog post and it was about the biography group and their presentation. She said that they talked about how biographies are often not about "normal" people. I have never thought about biographies in those terms. We often read biographies about people that we can have a hard time personally relating too. What would happen if the students were able to pick up a book off the shelves and the story is about a real normal person? 

I think this is why I think it's so important that we have students at some point in time create their own version. Students should be able to reach out and see the life stories of people that go through the same things that they do. I think that this could be a very empowering and creative lesson to have the students complete. It can be a really fun activity to have students create the books and stories that we wish to see in the world. I think that this could inspire students as writers to go ahead and create whatever they feel is missing in the literary world. 

The one part of the biographical writing section that I feel would work at any level is the part on multigenre biographies (Tompkins 2012, p.341). I think that using that type of biography in the classroom would work really well. The mulitgenre biographies allows for students to choose a multitude of genres and artistic opportunities to express their thoughts and feelings (Tompkins 2012, p.341). Students would have the opportunity to choose exactly what their life stories would look like and would have complete ownership over their work. This is also a great way to check for understanding in a variety of genres. You can see how well students can write a poem, story, and a letter all in one project. Students are also able to showcase any artistic talents they would like. We can even have students choose to do this on other people as well if we wanted. Tompkins (2012) shows a student that decided to do this with Maya Angelou (p.342). I did a version of this project with my students in the beginning of the year. Students were asked to decorate the classroom with pieces of themselves. They decorated index cards with their favorite quotes that represent themselves. This was a way to learn more about the students and have them take ownership of the space that they are working in. 

I feel that there are some really exciting things that we can do inside the classrooms to showcase this writing genre. We can use this opportunity to check for understanding in a variety of writing styles and incorporate peoples style into the classroom. McKenzie's thoughts on the biography presentation were great and helped me to think about an important aspect of biographies. 

McKenzie's Blog: https://mhartsp22blog.blogspot.com/