How To Write A Biography – Upper Primary School Students

This post on How To Write A Biography is part of my 21 Challenge. I am taking The 21 Challenge to raise money to support homeless and at-risk young people in Australia. There are more than 32,000 young people who sleep on our streets every night and I blogging a kids activity daily to raise funds to go to Open Family Australia who support these youths.

My challenge is to blog daily an activity I do each day with my kids, using only things we have at home or use what we have on hand when we are out. You can see all the children’s activities I have posted as part of the 21 Challenge by clicking on the tag 21 Challenge here.

********

How To Write A Biography

Master 11 is studying natural disasters at school at the moment. They need to complete two homework activities through out the week around this theme. There are a range of activities for them to choose from and this weekend he chose writing a biography of someone who had survived a natural disaster.

I asked him did he know how to write a biography, to which he replied something along the lines of “you just write lots of stuff about the person”. I suggested we work together to plan his biography first and he thought this was a good idea!

So I put together a process for him to follow to put together his biogprahy which looks like this:

Master 11 found the look of this quite daunting at first. Once I explained the different steps to him and how if he just broke it down to:

  • Note-taking
  • Planning
  • Writing
  • Editing

it really wasn’t that complex.

He set about the task and worked really hard:

How To Write A Biography

He researched and took notes. I have found taking notes and encouraging dot points in handwriting helps prevent the “copy and paste” syndrome.

How To Write A Biography

He wrote his plan.

How To Write A Biography

He wrote his first draft. He then used the editing checklist and made a second and third draft.

You could see he was very proud of his end result. It did take him much longer than he thought and I was impressed at the time he spent on the homework activity. Learning a variety of writing styles is important and it was great to see him take on a writing challenge that was completely new to him.

What tips do you give your kids for writing a biography?

If you enjoyed this post, you are welcome to sponsor me in my 21 Challenge. Donations are tax-deductible and can be made securely online here. Thanks!