Introductory Performances
The Personal Biography Project
Generative Topic: People in Colonial History
Unit-level Understanding Goals addressed by this performance:
Sentence Form:Understanding Performances:
Students will understand the potential of biographies as historical sources. Question Form:
What might biographies tell us?
What questions might we ask of biographies?
How do these questions relate to the Throughlines for this course?
[Assignment: Students choose and read a biography of anyone from any time or place who interests them personally.]
Ongoing Assessment:
- In a collaborative dialogue, students brainstorm the important things they noticed as they read their biographies.
- In a collaborative dialogue, students analyze and categorize their brainstormed list.
- In a collaborative dialogue, students generate a list of important questions. The teacher synthesizes these into the Questions to Consider [see next page], which is used to guide the next two phases of the work with biographies.
- Students keep a process journal of reflections on their work.
Feedback:
Informal and oral by peers and teacher
Written reflections by student Criteria:
Developed collaboratively by student and teacher
