A Window to the Writers Heart

English, Middle School

Performance Tasks: You are famous author that had produced many best sellers in the last couple of years. Right now you are going thru the process of publishing your latest book: an autobiography. Your autobiographys purpose is to show the audience how you experienced an unfair social issue and what you did to overcome it. What do you want your audience to know about this part of your life to help them understand and do something about any unfair social issue? Other evidence: 1. Prewriting: Each student writes a paragraph where they brainstorm about what they want to write in their autobiography. In this paragraph they include their purpose and audience. 2. Writing: Write a two page autobiography about a time in your life where you had to overcome a difficult situation. 3. Revising: After teacher/peer conferences, students take suggestions to revise and better their autobiography. 4. Editing: Students participate in a discussion about what were their problem areas in grammar and conventions. 5. Publishing: Students read in authors chair an excerpt of their biography.

Student Self-Assessment and Reflection: After publishing their autobiographies, the students will respond to the following question in a paragraph: 1. How do you think the purpose of your autobiography will impact your classmates? 2. If you were to write another autobiography, what would you write it about? What would be your purpose? Nicely done Fabiola! You have incorporated various forms of assessments that will give you individualized data regarding unit objectives. You have created a logical flow of activities leading up to the final project, the autobiography. You might consider adding an additional self assessment prompt that gets at what they have learned about the writing process but that is up to you. I look forward to stage 3, which brings all the other stages together. Great job.