How To Write Your Life Story, by Ralph Fletcher (Tim)
How to Write Your Life Story, by Ralph Fletcher (Tim)
I read this paperback, along with a couple of others in this series by Ralph Fletcher, including How Writer’s Work, Finding a Writing Process that Works for You, and Poetry Matters, Writing a Poem From the Iniside Out. The books are supposed to be written at a level so intermediate elementary students and above can read them, or at least you could use it as a read aloud.
The book is quick and easy reading (at least for an adult), written in a narrative style. It has specific activies, but in general it’s more of an overview and an inspiration book about writing a memoir or autobiography. It includes the idea of the “Neighborhood Map” idea that we did the first day of summer ISI. It also includes a related activity called a “Heart Map.” I tried both at Anderson with 5th graders, and the results were great. Many kids invested time into the maps. We then did a piece about a “personal memory.” I think the maps were a great pre-writing activity.
If you’re looking for lots of specific lesson plans, this probably isn’t the book for you. Again, it’s more about ideas that you can develop into your own plans. The book also includes interviews with authors, as do all the books in the series, such as Jack Gantos. The ideas are applicable for all ages, probably 4th grade to adult.
One “criticism” about the book(s) is it has a strong white, middle-classs point of view. Most of the examples are about growing up in New England, playing baseball, eating apple pie, playing in the forest by the creek, and curling up in a “nook” in the kitchen by the roaring fire with your writers notebook writing about the snow falling on cedars. Nothing at all wrong with that, but I think it would be hard many of the students at Anderson to relate to that kind of “writer’s life.”
Overall, for $5.99 and if nothing else but a breezy and inspiring read, How to Write You Life Story is well worth taking a look at.
(This post was originally posted as a comment, accidently)
From NNWP’s 2008 Summer Institute, 2008/09/06 at 11:46 AM
