Literary Nonfiction: what’s important in a biography?
In the upper grades (2-5), we planned a unit in which the teacher reads several literary nonfiction texts and looks for specific things in each one, and then adds them to a matrix to help students make connections across texts.
This is the way our matrix looks in third grade:
In case you can’t read the questions, they’re
– Who is the subject/main person?
– What are their traits?
– What are their motivations or goals?
– What challenges does he or she face?
– How do they overcome the challenge?
– What lesson can we learn from their life?
We chose to read…

and Snowflake Bentley – one of my favorites!
It’s especially difficult for kids to understand and decide on a lesson, moral, or theme for the text. Our teachers worked on the theme as the learning that the character does or the reader can do as a result of how the problem is solved (or challenge is overcome).
Question for you: Which biographies do you love to read with kids? Which have the best messages for us to learn?
Thank you so much for the great ideas!! I have my observation this week, and this the unit that I would be teaching this week!! Have a wonderful week!!
Thank you for sharing with us.
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