Autobiographies, Biographies and "The Story of Me"

The countdown has started!! FOUR days until Thanksgiving Break. YIPEE!

Only problem is as the holidays grow closer, the kiddos start showing their wild[er] side... So I've been trying to come up with QUIET yet PURPOSEFUL and ENGAGING activities. 

This week we started Biographies & Autobiographies. It's pretty easy to find books and selections that are biographies, but I've found it kind of tricky to find autobiographies... So I decided to make my students the authors! 

Side note: I did use The Story of Ruby Bridges and Through My Eyes (by Ruby Bridges) to introduce biographies and autobiographies. We used a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast the story elements.

Back to my student authors! Each student got an autobiography template. Here's what we did with them. 

- On the front, students drew a self portrait. They turned out SO CUTE. 

--->On the inside, there was a blank time line and a map. On the timeline, I had students write the year of their birth, then we filled in dates all of the students shared (start of Pre-K, Kinder, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc). I then modeled how to sequence specific and important life events and record on the timeline. Students added a few dates that were meaningful to them. On the map, students marked where they were born, grew up and now live. 
--->I then had students write an autobiography. I provided them with sentence stems they had to include in their composition. They included:
      - My name is…
      - I was born on…. in…
      - I [now] live in….
      - I started ____ grade in…
      - An important live event was…

--->My kiddos SERIOUSLY loved making their books. Once the autobiographies were finished, I paired students with a partner. They read each other’s autobiographies and then wrote a short biography on their partner. I then let them present their biography on their partner to the class!

Would you like your own FREE copy of "The Story of ME"? I've made it a Facebook Follower EXCLUSIVE! All you have to do is go to my Facebook page, LIKE IT :) then scroll down to the bottom left and click on the Freebies for Followers button! SO EASY! 

Enjoy!! And thank you for reading and following!! xo