Students then further examine, through both class discussion and essays, the importance of authenticity in the media. In this lesson, students explore the genre of biography in both its traditional and nontraditional forms. Students first examine the creation of and reactions toward Edmund Morris's unorthodox biography of Ronald Reagan. Students then conduct research on a historic American figure and his or her role in a significant event in American history, recounting these details by writing a narrative-style biography of this figure. In this lesson, students examine how an exhibition of an author's writings can become a portrait or biography of that author by first learning about an exhibit on William Butler Yeats and what it reflects about this famous poet.
Students then work in small groups, analyzing various poems by Yeats using varied written forms.
In this lesson, students use titles of Shel Silverstein poems to generate their own poetry for children. Each student then compares his or her poem to the Shel Silverstein poem of the same title, focusing on the relationship of the title to each poem, the meaning of each poem, and the methods used by the authors to reach their intended audience of children. In this lesson, students use a piece of literature by and an article about Edgar Allan Poe to investigate the relationship between word choice and the reader s mood and interpretation of a piece of writing. Each student then creates a visual display that examines a favorite writer through biographical information, analysis of quotations about the author and his or her works, and interpretation of a piece of the author s writing. In this lesson, students examine nonfiction writing and its role in preserving history.