Best Practices for Teaching Biographies
Listen to the full episode to hear best practices for teaching biographies:
Teaching literacy is often surrounded by the genre of fiction. Students understand the characteristics and plot elements, which results in them independently reading fictional books on their own. But there’s another type of genre, nonfiction, and more specifically biographies, which they’re less familiar with.
February is the perfect time for teaching biographies by incorporating Black History Month. But even without that, incorporating biographies into your classroom is so important. While it’s not as initially engaging as fiction, there are ways to pique students’ interest with this genre. In today’s episode, I’m sharing my simple and best practices for teaching biographies.
Oftentimes, students don’t like what they don’t understand, so getting them to understand biographies is the first step. Throughout the episode, I walk you through my five simple steps of exploring biographies in order to get students interested in this type of genre. With this exploration, you’ll help students understand how this genre works, how to identify it from a group of texts, and how to recognize the main purpose of this genre.
Fiction is a genre students already enjoy, but by incorporating these best practices for teaching biographies, this will soon be a genre students will be engaged in and exploring all on their own.
In this episode on teaching biographies, I share:
- 5 tips for teaching biographies in creative and engaging ways
- Why February is the perfect opportunity to teach biographies
- How class findings can be turned into anchor chart references for your students
- A class example on how to creatively teach biographies
Resources Mentioned:
- Join the Writing Made Simple Membership
- Biography Graphic Organizer Freebie
- Grab my free Step-by-Step Writing routine!
- Episode 118, Using Morning Meeting to Support Black History
- Episode 119, 5 Black History Month Activities for Elementary Students
Connect with Megan:
About The Literacy Dive Podcast:
Do you find yourself seeking new ideas when it comes to literacy instruction in elementary classrooms? The Literacy Dive Podcast was created to offer actionable steps and to share information for teachers, like you, who are always looking to improve their craft! ELA is our jam and we are excited to dive into all things reading and writing with you!
Your host, Megan Polk, is the creator and owner behind The Literacy Dive and loves to support students and their teachers with curriculum, literacy instruction, best practices, and engaging literacy activities.
Dive in with us every Monday for a new episode from Megan! She, and her guests, will chat about various literacy topics and will bring you tips and tricks that can easily be implemented in your classrooms. You can tune in wherever you get your podcasts! Listen to The Literacy Dive Podcast
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Hey, I'm Megan!
I am a literacy specialist and curriculum designer who loves sharing tips and ideas to help students thrive in literacy! It brings me joy to await those a-ha moments and to see light bulbs turn on!
I have a huge passion for reading and writing and love to co-mingle the two any chance I get! You can expect to learn new strategies and ways to keep your students engaged during your literacy block! I am so glad you’re here!
