Subject: Language Arts Grade: Eight

Standard: #3: Literary Response and Analysis

Key Concept: Analyzing a work of literature in connection with facts about its author enhances understanding of the heritage, beliefs, traditions, and attitudes of the author.

Generalization: Biography or biographical clips of authors can enhance understanding of literary works and helps students understand context for writing.

Background: Students have read a variety of literature. They have chosen an author (from a list of authors read in the course) to research in order to understand the author's writing more comprehensively. In today's lesson, students share ideas with other students interested in the same author.

This lesson is tiered in content according to interest.

Guiding Principle for Grouping:

In this lesson, all students have read a piece of literature (in class assignments) by each author on the list of choices. They have specified an interest in learning more biographical information about one of the authors. The grouping is guided by their interests. All students interested in each author comprise a group. Limit the list of choices to a reasonable number so that groups can occur. If many students are interested in the same author, create more than one group for that author. The idea is that the teacher does not force students into unwanted groups because places are already taken in the group they desire.

Tier I: Students Interested in Edgar Allen Poe

Tier II: Students Interested in Harper Lee

Tier III: Students Interested in Mark Twain

Tier IV: Students Interested in Jack London

All groups will work on the same process. They need to research their author on the Internet, in biographies, and in a variety of reference books. They also need to discuss the information they gained in their research with each other and to apply the research to the literature they read in class. Their focus is on what specific facts they find in the biographical information that seems to be reflected in the author's work. Each group should create a transparency with a list of influences from biography that they find. Specific textual references should be shared as well from the literature all students read.

Large Group Sharing and Assessment: This is a perfect way to pool ideas since all students have read all the pieces analyzed. With the extra specialized focus, each group can add to the knowledge base of other students in the class. Assign students to take notes from the information shared by other groups. A short quiz on the material would be a logical assessment for this task for the entire class (so true listening among groups does happen). In addition, each student should turn in all research material he/she amasses in the process for individual assessment.

8LI-FAD