Week of November 2nd: Nonfiction Biography, Chapter 11

   To start off the class this week, our professor did a read aloud on a children's book called Bully. It was a cute story with a good lesson. In the book, a bull says mean things to his friends when they ask him to play. The author used wordplay a lot and that made the book funny and interesting. For instance, he would say "chicken!" to the chicken, or "you stink!" to the skunk. When one farm animal calls him out for being a bully, he feels bad and apologizes to the other animals. The book could truly be a valuable asset in a classroom to reinforce in children that bullying is mean.

   We also talked about nonfiction biography in class today, which is also chapter 11 of our textbook. I learned that nonfiction biographies are works that feature the lives of real individuals. They can be partial, complete, or collective. A partial biography is just a snippet or segment of a person's life that is explore in depth. I think I will do a partial biography for my biography picture book of my partner at the end of the semester. I think it will be fun to zoom in on a certain aspect of her life and explore it more. Anyways, a complete biography is just as it sounds: a story of their life from birth to present. A collective biography tells the stories of several different people's lives who have something in common. 

   There are also of course autobiographies and memoirs. Memoirs are much more reflective than autobiographies. I think that I would personally enjoy reading a memoir more than an autobiography because it seems like it would focus more so on more important events and the meaning that they hold to the author. Important elements of biographies include characterization, structure, and visuals. I feel like visuals are one of the most important parts of a biography. Visuals allow readers to connect the person's story to an actual image in their head which will lead to a more memorable reading experience. 

   I think biographies would be a valuable thing for my future classroom library because they will allow my students to learn about true events. I just have to evaluate biographies based on how engaging and believable they are to ensure that my students will find them interesting.