Biographical

1. Terminology: 

You need to be able to categorise a book into the following categories:

1. Biography: An account of someone’s life written by someone else.
2. Autobiography: An account of someone’s life written by themselves.
3. Memoir: A type of autobiography that typically focusses on a particular event or period in the author’s life, and based only on one’s personal experience.
4. Journal/Diary: A book in which one keeps a personal record of events occurred during the day, describing one’s observations, dreams and fears.
5. Biopic: A movie or TV biography, often with fictionalized elements to make it more dramatic.

2. The Book Review Show:

This is a major assignment that you may need to do three times (in the first, second, and third quarters), so it’s worth putting in a lot of effort:

•  First you need to read a biography, autobiography, memoir, journal or collection of letters of your choice from this list (all of which should be available from the school library), or have any other suitable book approved by your  teacher.
• After finishing your book, write a review following these instructions.  To get an idea of the writing style you should use, read some music reviews here!
• To give you an idea of how long and how well written your review needs to be, see this example: Biography Review  
  
• You then need to read over your book review, and make it better.
• Proofread it again and again!
• In class, pair up with someone else to film your review show.
• Make sure you follow these instructions very closely.
• Share your video with the rest of the class.

3. Your own memoir:

 You are going to try to make a memoir of your own.  You need to start by thinking about an important moment in your life that tells your readers something about what you are like.  Write some notes in response to at least five of the questions below.

• What’s your earliest memory?
• What is the most important thing that has ever happened to you?
• What is the worst thing that ever happened to you?
• What is something you will never forget?
• What is the moment where you were 100% happy?
• What was a time when you felt brokenhearted?
• What memory shows something important about your family or your friends?
• What was a time when you’ve laughed harder than you’ve ever laughed before?

Now you have some notes, decide which of the responses to use for your memoir.  You can design a comic book, write a poem, or a one-page memoir based on one (or more) of the responses.

4. Journal writing:

In your journal this year, you are  going to write exclusively about yourself.  We will begin in the first quarter, but you will also take your journal with you to Trysil when we go on leirskole.

When you are asked to write about your day, or about something that happened in your life, remember to focus on how you personally experienced it.  Describe the sights, sounds, and smells, and explain what you liked and disliked, and why.