• First, you will pick out a Who Was or Who Is book on a biography subject that interests you! This will be the book that you will be focusing on throughout the unit. Make sure to pick a person that you feel you would like to learn more about.

• Next, you will fill out a calendar called "Biography Book Reading Plan." This calendar will help you to pace yourself through the book. You will plan how many pages they will read each day in the given time frame and also plan out how many stop & jots you will write each day. This will help you with your time management skills and make you accountable for the reading each day.

  • Then you will fill out the "Preview and Predict Activity" to make some predictions about the subject of your biography! Look at the non-fiction text features, chapter titles, timeline, and back cover over the book.  

• After that, you will go over and look at the "My Biography" notes sheet that you will be completing throughout the unit. You will take notes on this sheet as you read each day, identifying important information about the subject of your biography. This will be collected and graded as it is the "research" for your flip-book project which will be completed at the end of the unit.

  • In this notes sheet, you will be identifying information about the subject of your biography from the beginning, middle, and end of their lives! This graphic organizer notes sheet will help you section off your notes in an organized manner as you read. The "My Biography" notes will be collected and graded using the My Biography Notes Rubric.

• Finally, at the end of the unit, after reading and note-taking you will be completing a "Biography Flipbook Project". You will take all of the information that you have gathered throughout your reading in class and make it into a flipbook! This flipbook will be organized based on the different sections of the graphic organizer.

  • You will complete this project in class. You will collect the information necessary to complete this project as you read. The topics that will be included in the flipbook are as follows: notes from the subject's life, interesting facts, subject's lesson to the world, and a Biography Poem in your flipbook. The rubric and checklist for this project can be found on the resources page. 

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Key Terms:

• Biography: the narrative of a person including all the relevant information and details about his/her life written by someone else

  • The word biography comes from the two root words, bio and graphy.

    • Bio means life

    • Graphy means writing.

    • Therefore, biography means writing about life.

• Biography subject: what the main character of a biography is referred to as

• Fiction: a literary work based on the imagination and not necessarily on fact

• Non-Fiction: text or writing that is not fictional but contains factual, true information

• Autobiography: the life story of an individual, as written by him or herself

• Non-fiction text feature: features that help a reader to navigate a non-fiction text more easily.

  • ​Examples: Table of Contents, Headings, Bold Words, Captions, Photographs, Graphs, Charts, Illustrations, Glossary, and Index.