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Introduction Cast of Characters Awards & Reviews Activities:
First Lines: A Sort of Literacy Test
An assortment of quizzes to match classic great books with their first lines
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/jad22/Have students choose a writer who particularly interests them. Explore his or her life in more depth with a trip to the library and a visit to some links.
Have students write their autobiographies in the style of the LIVES OF. Include claims to fame, favorite foods, pets, books and TV shows, childhood stories, sports, unusual habits, plans for the future, and other items of interest. Draw a self-portrait and collate the pages into a book called LIVES OF THE STUDENTS.
Invite local authors of books for young readers to speak to the class about their working methods and influences.
Use the chapters of Lives of the Writers as a way of easing students into reading the great books themselves-- reading along with studying each writer’s works. Look for how their lives influenced their writing, to gain a better understanding of the works.
A note from the author: One of the many joys of working on this book was getting to read or reread works by these notables. Twain is absolutely hilarious; Poe is gruesome; Hurston’s books are riveting; Gary Paulsen owes a lot to Jack London; and so forth. Get students in the habit of noticing the names of the authors of books they like. It always seems to come as a surprise that these great books had AUTHORS, real, live (at one time) people with personalities, faults, and virtues. An important lesson for a number of reasons—for one thing, it gives kids that glimmer of an idea that being an author is an actual career choice for themselves.
Have students create a classroom writing center. Discuss and collect supplies: pens and pencils, paper, journals, computers, comfortable table, chairs, pillows, bulletin board, books, audiotapes and music, audio players with headsets, age-appropriate dictionaries, thesauri, style manuals, a file system for work-in-progress. Also a statement from each student about what motivates them to write (a strong emotion, a meaningful song, a dream, a powerful book, a poem, an overheard conversation…). (Check out more activities like this one on the “Curricular Connections” page for Lives of the Writers on the Audio Bookshelf website at http://www.audiobookshelf.com/lowriters_cc.html)
Many of the works by these writers are available on-line. For example:
The Complete Poems of Emily DickinsonHow many others can you find?
http://www.bartleby.com/113/The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=113128 of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales
http://hca.gilead.org.il/Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson at Project Gutenburg
http://promo.net/pg/index.htmlHarcourt study guide section on Writers
Approximately 38 things to do with biographies in the classroom
