Schoolwide Blog

What is a memoir? By Linda Howard

 

 

Do you remember a few years back when the author, James Frey, appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show to promote his memoir, Million Little Pieces?  Then a short time later he appeared on the Larry King show to defend his book because he mentioned he may have made up some parts of his story.  The book was then declared fiction and not a memoir.  If a published author who sold many copies of his story was confused as to whether or not he wrote a memoir then one can only imagine how confusing it gets in the classroom with a several 3rd, 4th, or 5th graders.  What exactly is a memoir?

According to Bonnie Leitstein, a writing staff developer from District 22, New York City, a memoir is a focused, reflective genre that is generally written to yield important information about a person.  She goes on to explain writers of memoir take us back to specific times and places, and tend to highlight those special relationships that help the reader understand them better.  A memoir is technically not an autobiography but focuses on a person’s own clear observations, memories and feelings at a certain point in time.  It is a nonfiction piece of writing.

I have found one of the best ways to help students understand this genre (or any genre) is to provide a classroom environment in which students are immersed in the genre to be studied.  An effective way to get writers ready is to allow students to make daily entries into their notebook ahead of time.  I have allowed my writers to make entries in response to literature, events in their lives, and to react to a newspaper article or a current event that triggers a memory.  These entries will not be their memoir but seeds which will be revisited to choose one to be written as a memoir.  Another way to prepare writers for this genre study is to deepen their understanding of memoirs by reading several good examples of them ahead of time, before the writing project gets started.  I also like to model my own writing by starting with choosing a seed from my notebook. Below are some titles of memoirs which can be used as a read aloud as well as using them as mentor texts once your students start writing a memoir:

•    Nettie’s Trip South  by Ann Turner
•    Hey World, Here I Am by Jean Little
•    Bigmama’s by Donald Crews
•    Birthday Presents by Cynthia Rylant
•    Knots on a Counting Rope by Bill Martin and John Archambault
•    Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl
•    Grandfather’s Journey by Allen Say
•    Homesick, My Own Story by Jean Fritz

I’m sure there are other titles, even more recently published ones that can be recommended for this genre study.  Love to hear your recommendations and add them to the list!

Which authors inspire you to read? By Celia Anderson

 

 

I Was Cassie Logan

We had a substitute who was a rebel.

Although our teacher had left specific instructions, she had something else in mind. After calling the roll, she pulled a book from her bag, and then sat down on a stool in front of the class. We all giggled, because her voluptuous frame hung over the side of the stool much like her feet hung over the side of her shoes. More...

What do you think about DEAR programs? By S. Roy Stevenson

 

 

I was sitting in the faculty room of one our buildings listening to colleagues discuss their summer reading.  One after another mentioned a “beach book” and spoke with guilty pleasure of having read something totally trivial, a mystery or romance novel, that was “fun,” “superficial,” and thoroughly “entertaining.”  It was as if they were describing some kind of an illicit act, something they would not ordinarily do, and admitting to their friends in the sanctity of the faculty room that what took place in Vegas, stayed in Vegas. More...

What are you doing for constitution day Sept 17th?

Public Law 108-477, enacted in 2005, requires public schools to provide an educational program on the U.S. Constitution on September 17, Constitution Day. It’s a great idea. All students need a healthy civics background, and celebrating the day our founding fathers signed the document which created our unique American democracy can make meaningful and memorable impressions. But September 17th comes in the first month of school. Most classroom teachers are still busy establishing the routines and rhythms of a new school year. Where can you find the time to prepare a Constitution Day lesson? More...

Reading is Magic

 

One of the first things you learn as a teacher is that children love to be read to.  I don’t care what age the kids are, I have had the pleasure of reading to students ranging from kindergarten to high school and without exception the room quiets, bodies relax, breathing slows, and eyes either close or watch intently.  It doesn’t take much more than an engaging narrative and a bit of theatrics to capture an audience.  The cliché is that music soothes the savage beast.  Well, I would argue that reading aloud has the same effect on students.  More...

Vera B. Williams talks about editing and illustrating using her book, Scooter.

In another sneak peek at the forthcoming Schoolwide Network video site, author Vera B Williams advises on when to edit and write using her book, Scooter, as an example.  Look here for more announcements on the official launch of the Schoolwide Network in the weeks to come.

 

 

Writing about serious topics for teens. By Greg Neri

My books are provocative by nature. They deal with subject matters many adults might feel uncomfortable talking about. I try to show these topics honestly without preaching or judging. These books show the truth as I have seen it and hopefully, they provoke discussion and thought. More...

Author Study of Greg Neri: Writing about young protagonists.

I often say the only difference between adult fiction and young adult fiction is the main character's age. You can pretty much deal with anything you do in adult fiction--from death to war, and anything else you might find in the Great American Novel... except it's fueled by the teen mind. And seeing a story through teen eyes is the key to why I write middle grade and YA fiction. More...

How can teachers distinguish between essential and nonessential books?

When I entered this field of writing, the buzzword of the era was “bibliotherapy”: that you would match the problem in the kid’s life with the problem in the book. And we did have books on every problem, every issue—and we still do—good ones, great ones. But it turned out that it didn’t quite work that way. The kid who had the greatest problem was probably not going to read the book on that subject. Kids read for other reasons. They read mainly for escape. Harry Potter and vampire stories outsell all the rest of us. More...

Why do students need better role models?

We all need role models—writers or not. And all the best role models are dead and all the worst role models are a year ahead of you in school. I found my role model in 4th grade: Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He could make rough music out of real speech and that became the goal of my life. He was writing in the past, of course. He was a nineteenth-century writer and I was a twentieth-century kid. But he was speaking in the same voice as the old men who hung out at my dad’s filling station—men whose lives had overlapped with Mark Twain’s. More...