Summer SAVY, Session 6 Day 5, The Story of You! Autobiography (3rd-4th)
It’s the Friday Finale!
We started our day with a would you rather activity with exercise moves to make sure everyone was awake and ready for the day. After that, we did a quick editing task to remind ourselves of the rules about capitalization and punctuation before we went through our own autobiography to do our final edits. Once they took some time to make those edits we did one final PQP with someone different from who they worked with yesterday. I wanted them to have a few different eyes on their writing throughout the week because everyone will notice different elements of their writing and this can only improve their stories.
Finally, it was time for our final drafts! Students copied their writing onto a fresh and clean page and created a cover page that included their title, their name, and a picture to go along with their autobiographies. Students were being very careful with their final drafts so this took us a good chunk of our day but they each ended up with a product that they should be very proud of!
After lunch, we had our Author Presentation! Each student stood in front of the class and presented the autobiographies that they had so carefully written this week. It takes a lot of courage to stand in front of a group of 14 peers and multiple adults to read something that you have written about a time in your life that changed you. These kids did it with more calm and focus than some adults that I’ve seen present. As audience members, they were active listeners and gave an incredible round of applause for each writer so each one of them felt supported by those around them. They were also allowed to ask questions of each author after they read and they asked some very thoughtful questions of each other.
Students will be coming home today with 2 poems that they wrote this week and their autobiography. Take some time to look over and talk with them about what they wrote, they have really done some fantastic work in our short week together and did it all on their own. From the idea of what to write, to their title and multiple pages of writing each and every step of this project came from them.
Some questions you can ask them about their projects:
- How did the event you wrote about change you?
- Why did you pick this title?
- Can you show me some of the sensory details you included in your writing?
- What was your favorite autobiography from your classmates about? Why was that one your favorite?
- How did reading your work in front of everyone make you feel?
I am so proud of this group and the focus and care they put into each activity I asked them to do this week. They were all willing and excited to work with any of their classmates and rose to the challenge when the activities we did were outside of their comfort zone. They made this week very meaningful while also allowing time for fun!