Totally Us

Objectives

• Students will develop name biographies together in groups of four
• Students will see that they have attributes in common with classmates as well as characteristics unique to themselves

Materials

• Large poster paper and colored markers

In James Howe's new book "Totally Joe," Joe Bunch wrote an "alphabiography" in which he described himself from A to Z. Each letter described a facet of himself in essay form; "F," for example, stood for Family, where Joe Bunch wrote about his parents, his brother Jeff and his Aunt Pam. This lesson allows students to do the same thing with the letters of their first or last names.

STEP ONE: Cooperative Groups
Students will be in groups of four. All students in each group must share a common letter to their names. (A group with Maria, Graydon, Alexandria and Jack would share the letter "a," for example.) Each group will share a sheet of poster paper to write their four name biographies.

STEP TWO: Shared and Unique
Using the shared letter, students must come up with a characteristic or quality that all four students have in common. (For the group in Step One, that may be "active," "alert" or "acrobatic," for example.) Once the shared letter is completed, students remain in their groups but work individually to complete the unique letters of their names. (They may end up with overlapping words, which is fine -- another sign of common ground.)

STEP THREE: Summary
Students then collaboratively write a summary statement regarding their four name biographies. Lead questions might be: How are we alike? How are we different? Was it difficult, or relatively easy, to find what we had in common? Did any of our "unique" traits end up being similar with others in our group? What surprised us about what we learned about each other?

STEP FOUR: Presentation
Student groups then present their name biographies to the class. (Consider having students introduce someone else in their group instead of themselves.) After all groups have made their presentations, see if students can write a summary statement regarding all of the names in the class; use the lead questions in Step Three to aid in this task.

This activity meets curriculum standards in Language Arts and Visual Arts as outlined by Content Knowledge: A Compendium of Standards and Benchmarks for K-12 Education, 4th Edition [1].