Writing Memoirs

It's time for our first unit of the year... MEMOIRS! It's only my second year teaching, but as long as I teach middle school language arts, I will start the year off with memoirs.  It just seems like it's the best way to go.  It's something to get my students writing before we've even had a chance to discuss writing skills.  That might seem like a silly reason to want to start with this, but I think it's important to gauge where my students are in their writing skills before I try to teach them.  How will I know where to start if I don't?

Besides, memoirs should be one of the easiest subjects for the students all year.  They don't have to research or learn about a new subject.  They're writing about themselves!  It only asks the students to be reflective and describe a powerful memory in their life in great detail.  However, that part is very important.  It needs to be a very specific and important memory.  I always tell my students to ask themselves "So what?" when they think of a topic.  If they can answer why the memory is very important to them, then it's probably a good memory to write about.

That doesn't mean I turn them loose writing without any instruction.  We spend a full week on activities before they even start writing.  The first activity simply asks them to recall some of their most important memories.  They answer several questions that will hopefully spark some of the most important memories (feel free to use them, just please make a copy).  I teach twelve-year-olds, so despite what they keep telling me, they don't have that many years to remember.  After they have a list of possible writing topics, we start talking about the mechanics I want them to focus on for this project.  The first is vivid language.  7th graders still revert to the most boring vocabulary.  I think this is the most valuable subject I teach during this unit.  Last year, I really saw the kids continuing to use it throughout the year.  Then we review a typical paragraph and essay structure, and lastly we learn how to properly punctuate dialogue.  Have you ever paid attention to how many rules dialogue has?  It's ridiculous, but I really want the kids to explain their memories in as much detail as possible, so dialogue usually helps.  Here is a slideshow I made to explain the rules for dialogue.

Finally, we will start writing.  Last year, I was pleasantly surprised by some, and disappointed by others.  It's a great project to show them again at the end of the year because their writing skills will have grown leaps and bounds.  All of our work is done on Google Drive, so it's easily kept in a folder online, and the students can't lose it.  If you have access to computers, I highly recommend using Google's many wonderful applications.  I'll talk more about those in future posts.  If you would like more of my memoir resources, please feel free to ask in the comments.