2. Working in groups to write life stories
Some of the first stories children hear are likely to be stories about the life experiences of family or community members. The life stories (biographies) of famous people are frequently published in magazines and newspapers and even in comic form, so, whether from listening or from reading, many pupils are likely to be familiar with life stories. This is a good starting point to stimulate interest in reading and writing.
In the classroom, pupils need support from their teacher and from one another when they are learning to speak, read and write – particularly if this is in an additional language. Case Study 2 and Activity 2 show how you can give pupils opportunities to read, talk, work together in small groups and write the first drafts of the life stories of people they are interested in. Pupils need examples to guide their development as writers. The articles they read can help them organise their writing and help with sentence structure and vocabulary.
Younger pupils will need you to work with them, guiding their writing and gradually extending their vocabulary.
Case Study 2: Using pupils’ interests to develop reading and writing skills
Mr Celestine Karera noticed that, in the playground, some Primary 6 boys – who showed no interest in reading and writing during English lessons – often sat together to read the soccer newspaper, Weekend Sports. They told him they enjoyed finding out about the lives of their favourite players.
This gave Celestine an idea. He asked the whole class whether they ever read newspapers or magazines and, if they did, what they enjoyed reading. Many said they tried to read stories about people who interested them, even though they couldn’t understand all the words. Celestine organised a collection of newspapers and magazines for the classroom. Then he asked pupils who they were most interested in reading about. The favourites were sports stars (mainly soccer, but some basketball, athletics and boxing), musicians, film and TV stars, followed by fashion models, politicians, community leaders and successful business people.
Celestine grouped pupils according to their interests. There were several groups for sports stars and musicians! He gave magazines and newspapers to each group and asked them to find articles/pictures about one person who interested them. Then, as a group, they helped each other to write one or two short sentences about the person’s life. They used their own words and pictures as well as vocabulary from the articles. They wrote their own title.
Celestine was pleased to find that most pupils were involved in reading and, while some did more of the writing than others, everyone participated. Each group enjoyed reading their biography to another group.
Activity 2: Reading and writing life stories
Use Resource 4: Preparing lessons on life stories to prepare for this activity.
Once you have done the activity described in Resource 4, you could follow it up with the one below, which is similar but more personal (for each, collect the drafts for use in the Key Activity).
Prepare a story that involves someone in your family or a close friend whom you admire. Ask pupils to read together the story you have copied on to the chalkboard.
Discuss the features of life stories (biographies). Ask pupils to tell you about people in their families they admire and why (could be great-grandparents, sisters, uncles, distant cousins – anyone!)
Ask them, for homework, to find out more about that person and use the information to write the first draft of the person’s life story (see Resource 4 for guidance on helping your pupils to do this).
Collect the drafts for use in the Key Activity.
If your class is very large you could do this activity with half the class, or smaller groups in turn. You could also group pupils according to their ability, mixing more able and less able pupils. With younger pupils you could do this as a whole-class exercise, helping them write down their ideas and words.
How well did the pupils respond to this activity?
1. Using poems to stimulate writing activities
