Goals

Develop a polished memoir on a theme about identity and incorporate it into a digital book to present to an audience on exhibition night.

 

Details

Duration: N/A

Assessments: Student reflections/journals, Student writing, Performance/presentation (i.e. speech, play), Oral defense

Additional Assessment Type: Digital book

Materials: Writing examples, computer with InDesign

 

Description

Project Overview
In Language Arts, you will write a personal memoir and read Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros to explore this type of personal writing. Your memoirs will be based on one of the following themes of identity:

Family/Culture/Home
Inner Self/Outer Self/Appearance
Community/Friends/Group Membership
Future/Purpose/Actions/ Choices

Additionally, you will produce other types of writing and poetry for your book. In Digital Media or Visual Arts, you will create an actual book that contains project work from digital media or visual arts class as well as polished writing from LA. Your book will also contain various "book" elements including dedication, title, reviewer comments, author's bio, and acknowledgements. World History will provide content about personal philosophy, which may be included in the Author's bio section of the book.

Exhibition Night
On Exhibition night, you will present your individual books to an audience of friends, family, and community members. You will write and present an artist statement in a presentation lasting 3-4 minutes. The presentation will include reading an excerpt from your memoir writing. You may also excerpt pieces from your other writing. You will talk reflectively about your process - strengths, challenges – and use your books to show samples as you speak. Your reflection will go in your artist statement.

On Exhibition Night, you will be exhibiting the following materials:
1. Digital Media or Visual Arts book
2. Written and creative artifacts from English Language Arts

Your polished, final written materials will need to be collected together and organized in a professional manner. Your final product will include:
1. Front and back covers -- include images related to the content of the book. The back cover should include reviews and a summary of the book's contents.
2. Dedication
3. Table of contents
4. Preface – A one page reflection of your book project process
5. Chapter for each piece
6. About writing my chapter -- A one page description of each person's writing process
7. About the author (you)
8. Acknowledgements

Book Project Overview
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Memoir Project Tasks
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Student Example # 1
By Dominic Ortiz ...
Download (1.5M)

Student Example # 2
By Katherine Law...
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Student Example # 3
By Tiffany Zhang ...
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Author Reflections

It was challenging to read a book in addition to asking the students to produce several types of writing assignments. In the future I would make a "reader" of different effective examples of memoirs as opposed to reading a novel and reading examples of memoir excerpts.