Who Am I?

     During our small group instruction, students are practicing their reading, writing, speaking and listening skills through a memoir study. While they may be very similar, there is a difference between a memoir and an autobiography. A memoir is a collection of memories written by that person.  An autobiography is the story of a person's life, written by that person. 

    To kick off the unit, students created a Who am I? booklet. Each page had a different question for students to answer. Although the questions were simple in nature, students really took time to reflect on some of them.

    Once their booklets were completed, they had a chance to share their book with a partner. To hold each other accountable for listening to their partner, they shared what they learned with another set of partners. Accountable talk promotes learning because students are required to speak, listen, explain, confirm, extend, clarify, justify, and verbalize thinking. We often do this in class to make sure that students are paying close attention to what someone else is saying. This promotes learning in the classroom. 

    While the Who am I? was used for English Language Development (ELD), it also served as an SEL (Social Emotional Learning) activity. Students really had a chance to get to know themselves a little better. It built our classroom community because students got a chance to discover that although they are different, they do have some things in common.