121. Best Practices for Teaching Biographies

The Literacy Dive Podcast: Reading and Writing Strategies for Upper Elementary Teachers and Parents

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 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.

Show Notes: https://theliteracydive.com/episode121

Resources Mentioned:

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• Biography Graphic Organizers Freebie

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