Strategy Report for Writing: Autobiographies

1. Strategy Report for Writing:Autobiographies By: Christine Bryan

2. Where the Strategy was found • The strategy was found on jimwrightonline.com. It is a website for teacher interventions for struggling writers. • Several writing strategies and interventions are provided.

3. This strategy is supported by the following research • I couldn’t find a lot of research to back the idea of writing autobiographies to help struggling writers. However, the theory behind the idea is good. If you have struggling writers, these students tend to lose interest, especially as they progress through school. Having them write about themselves may spark and interest in writing and give the teacher a platform to work off of.

4. Description of the strategy • “Assigning the class to write their own autobiographies can motivate hard-to-reach students who seem uninterested in most writing assignments”. • “Have students read a series of autobiographies of people who interest them. Discuss these biographies with the class. Then assign students to write their own autobiographies. (With the class, create a short questionnaire that students can use to interview their parents and other family members to collect information about their past.) Allow students to read their finished autobiographies for the class”.

5. Will this Strategy work best for one type of student over another • This strategy would work well with students who are not at all interested in wirting. Given our class discussions, I think this strategy would work really well with middle and high school students in particular. I think it is a great method to get non-writer’s interested in writing.

6. Why did you select this strategy • I chose this strategy because I think writing is very much overlooked today in favor of other subjects. However, I think good learning to write well is critical to a child’s education success. Higher education requires a student to be able to write well and I think we need to prepare all students and make them into good, solid writers if we want them to have academic success.

7. References • http://www.jimwrightonline.com/php/interventionista/interventionista_random.php?intv_ID=142