Autobiography
WHAT: An autobiography is a summary of information about a learner. According to the PBLA Practice Guidelines 2019, the autobiography is no longer required to be placed in the "About Me" section of the Language Companion Portfolio.
WHY: The autobiography provides a way for teachers to get to know their students and can inform planning and teaching throughout the course. It can also serve as a baseline sample of a student's language ability (writing, speaking) when they first begin the class.
HOW: You can make it an interactive learning opportunity by having students practice the different elements of an autobiography in different ways before having them complete a written sample.
Autobiography Warm-Ups, Activities and Strategies:
WHY: The autobiography provides a way for teachers to get to know their students and can inform planning and teaching throughout the course. It can also serve as a baseline sample of a student's language ability (writing, speaking) when they first begin the class.
HOW: You can make it an interactive learning opportunity by having students practice the different elements of an autobiography in different ways before having them complete a written sample.
Autobiography Warm-Ups, Activities and Strategies:
- Discuss / introduce with partner (speaking and listening)
- Read an example of someone else’s autobiography
- Work as a class to decide on a list of things you would like to know about each other
- Practice spelling and pronunciation of classmates’ names, countries, languages, etc.
- Get to know your partner (speaking and listening) and then write the biography of your partner
- Predict/guess information about our classmates before you know
- Listen to someone introduce or describe themselves and identify what information they shared
- TV Interview style with pretend microphone or voice recorder
- Draw or find pictures to make a collage or help illustrate more about yourself
- Write a description for an online profile/social media
- Talk about yourself to different audiences – job interview/boss, child’s class, new friend, etc.
- Show and tell, bring an item that describes you
- After the biographies are written, find students who have similarities and differences and write down names (one classmate from the same country, one classmate from a different country, etc.)
- Post completed autobiographies around the classroom for other students to read / record info
- Compile autobiographies into a yearbook-style booklet
Samples
Samples are provided in Word format as they should be adapted and modified for your own students and level. Samples are listed in order from lower levels to higher levels, although all can be modified to fit any level.
To download the documents below, you can either click on the button under each image (downloads to your computer directly) or download from Scribd by clicking on the download arrow icon (requires a login/password - free).
To download the documents below, you can either click on the button under each image (downloads to your computer directly) or download from Scribd by clicking on the download arrow icon (requires a login/password - free).