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 wrote his plan.

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!