Writing Our Lives: A Memoir Unit

Introduction

Middle school and high school students are at the age where they are changing rapidly, entering new phases in their growing up.  They are beginning to reflect on their past as they look toward the future.  They are ripe for writing a memoir or a personal narrative.

"Writing Our Lives: A Memoir Unit" is a 65-page standards-aligned unit that provides teachers with a four or five-week unit (depending on whether you use all the mentor texts) that includes daily lessons to help students delve deeply into memoir reading and writing.  This unit is appropriate for all students in grades 6-12 who are ELD, ESL students, General Ed students, RSP students, and even GATE students.

The unit includes the following

• --Detailed lesson plans that take students through the process of writing a memoir, including mining their memories for ideas, teaching points for teachers to make charts and conduct mini-lessons, writing prompts, writing practice, developing a whole memoir, revision, and publication.

• --Standards, Objectives, and Teaching Points

• --Seven mentor texts (with links to the texts online) which students will read twice, as readers and as writers, along with activities and questions.

• --Group, partner, and individual activities to learn the skills, techniques, and strategies of writing a memoir.

• --Built-in time for writing shorter and longer pieces

• --Revision strategies

• --Peer response and editing

• --Memoir  Rubric

Mentor Texts include: "Fish Cheeks," by Amy Tan; "Somebody's Fool," by Susan Bennett; "Beating a Bully," by Ibtisam Barakat; "The Pie," by Gary Soto; "How to be Black," by Baratunde Thurston; "Superman and Me," by Sherman Alexie; "Everything will be Okay," by James Howe. Mentor texts include guiding questions for students to discuss the stories as readers and as writers.

Mini-Lessons include: Mining my Memories; Noticing the Craft of Writing; Characterization; Overcoming an Obstacle; Characterization with Dialogue; Stretching out your Story with Details and Action; Using Descriptive and Figurative Language; Flashbacks; First Times List; Foreshadowing; Lessons from Mentor Narratives; Elements of a Memoir; Writing an Effective Hook or Lead;

Writing Prompts include: Embarrassment; Tricked, Lied, Mean Joke; Overcoming an Obstacle; Incorporating Dialogue; Listing all the Details; Making a Difficult Choice or Decision; Using Descriptive and Figurative Language; Flashbacks; First Time (Flashback); Quick Write on Confidence Level; Final Draft of a Complete Memoir