Brilliant Biographies: You Can Make This Unit Possible!

My Students

Biographies are the poor, forgotten stepchild of literacy instruction, but I plan on resurrecting the genre with my students next year. While my students can spout every statistic about the pop star du jour, they know almost nothing about America's greatest leaders, artists, scientists, and more.

I believe that the most important thing I can do for my students is help them become lifelong readers.

My twenty-two third grade students attend a Title-1 urban public school. They have limited access to reading materials at home, and they read in a relatively narrow range of genres at school. I have planned an interdisciplinary biography unit for my students for next year to immerse them in an important non-fiction genre, and to build their background knowledge about many of the most important people in history. Many of my students have never read a biography, and this is such a shame! They can learn about character development, perseverance, history, and research skills all by reading biographies.

My Project

However, in order to teach our biography unit, I need biographies for my students to read! The scant biographies in my school's library are all older than I am. My students will never get excited about biographies if their only choice of books are musty, crumbling tomes. The newer biographies published for children have colorful photographs, engaging text, and enticing illustrations. New biographies will make all the difference in the success of this unit, and after my students use these books for their biography reports, I will add the books to our school library's sadly depleted shelves so other classes can enjoy reading biographies as well.

Your generous support will make a huge difference for my students.

I am passionate about teaching and providing opportunities for the most underprivileged children in my city. I want every one of my wonderful students to succeed, and I know that they have to become readers to do this. Please help me put exciting new biographies into the hands of my students. I promise they will be read and reread for years!