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.
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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:
You download a PDF version of PWK – How to write a Biography here.
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:
He researched and took notes. I have found taking notes and encouraging dot points in handwriting helps prevent the “copy and paste” syndrome.
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?
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