The Genre

Memoirs capture moments in our lives. Memoirs are different from biographies; they don’t span long stretches nor do they document life histories. Instead, memoirs describe in rich detail those small yet powerful instances when we discover important truths about ourselves and the world around us. While some are about milestones such as a wedding or a graduation, they can just as likely be about everyday experiences that mean something to their authors. Crafting this genre requires introspection and discipline. Writers must become editors, selecting what to leave in and what to eliminate in order to communicate a larger truth to their readers.

Bringing memoir into the language arts classroom provides students with the opportunity to take known material—their own experience—and re-shape it into thoughtful pieces of writing. Our middle school youngsters have plenty to share. Like most adolescents, they are likely self-interested. Teaching memoir allows them to describe recollections of their own choosing, while simultaneously demanding the precise use of language and structure. Students learn narrative technique as well as planning, drafting, and revision skills. Moreover, studying memoir helps them to reflect on and make sense of their own lives and to communicate meaning deliberately through their writing.

The Author

Heather Lattimer

Dr. Heather Lattimer is an Assistant Professor in the School of Leadership and Education Sciences at the University of San Diego. Formerly a high school teacher and literacy coach, Heather has taught English, history, and mathematics in a diverse range of high school and middle school classrooms in both Northern and Southern California. Her expertise is in supporting struggling readers and writers and challenging chronic underachievers. Heather has consulted for schools and school districts throughout the country. Dr. Lattimer is the author of a professional text for teachers, Thinking through Genre: Units of Study in Reading and Writing Workshops, 4-12, published by Stenhouse in 2003. She holds a B.A. from Harvard University, received her M.A. in Education from Stanford University, and completed her doctorate in education at the University of California, San Diego, where her research focuses on educational access and equity for low-income students, teaching excellence in literacy and the social sciences, and the professional growth of teachers working in urban secondary schools.

Lessons at a Glance

The unit offers six weeks of instruction and is suitable for a wide range of middle school classrooms.

Step 1: Brainstorm Your Ideas

This beginning stage focuses on developing students’ ideas for their own writing. Through a range of activities, students collect potential seeds for their own memoirs. At the end of this step, they submit focused ideas of the experiences they will use for their memoirs. 

Lesson 1.1: Recognize the Author’s Experience
After reading a mentor text that clearly demonstrates the features of a memoir, the class differentiates between events (those things which happened) and experiences (the author’s emotional interaction with events). In their writers’ notebooks, students describe a time when they experienced emotions similar to those described in the memoir. 

Lesson 1.2: Brainstorm Topics for Your Memoir
With teacher modeling as a guide, students use one or more approach to generate topic ideas for the memoirs they will write.

Lesson 1.3: Develop a Topic Web
Students develop a web through which they explore the general idea for their memoirs. After placing the general idea in the center of a web, they “drill down” to the details and then reflect on their brainstormed ideas in preparation for selecting the focus of the memoir they will produce over the next several weeks. 

Step 2: Organize Your Ideas

By now students have a general sense of their topics and an idea of what they will be writing about. They get the chance to sharpen their understanding of the genre and develop specific plans for their own writing. By the end of this step, they will be expected to have completed outlines of the memoirs they will write.

Lesson 2.1: Narrow Your Topic
Guided by teacher modeling, students return to their webs to identify the one moment from their general idea that they feel is most memorable. Students add details that relate to the moment they selected. This will be the focus of their memoirs.

Lesson 2.2: Organize Your Memoir for Meaning
Students begin to structure their memoirs by identifying the three essential parts of a memoir – the “memorable moment,” the “before,” and the “after.”

Lesson 2.3: Outline Your Memoir
Using an Outline Organizer, students put the events of their memoirs (the “memorable moment,” the “before,” and the “after”) in an order that allows them to communicate effectively. Emphasis is placed on adding details that will help them to show meaning and eliminate details that are tangential.

Step 3: Connect With Your Readers

Students develop a collection of strategies that will allow them to make their writing more compelling and understandable to their readers. They experiment with these techniques using ideas from their outlines. While the experiments may or may not make it into their actual memoirs, students will end this step with a collection of new ways to communicate meaning to an audience.

Lesson 3.1: Explode the Moment
Students use sensory details to describe a particular passage related to the memoir texts they are planning. In their writers’ notebooks, they “explode” one part of their experiences by listing the associated sights, smells, sounds, tastes and physical feelings and then transforming the list into a paragraph or two.

Lesson 3.2: Show Emotions with Action
Students learn to distinguish between telling the audience how they feel and showing through the use of action words. They select a particular part of the memoir they are planning and craft a paragraph or two that shows their emotion instead of telling about it. 

Lesson 3.3: Write Dialogue to Connect with Readers
Students learn how to use dialogue to help their readers share the experience communicated in the memoir. Using their outlines, students decide where dialogue might be effective for enlivening the story or clarifying meaning. They then create dialogue that is realistic and compelling.  

Step 4: Write Your First Draft

Students synthesize their ideas and tell their personal stories in writing. By the end of this step, they will be expected to have complete drafts of their memoirs. While focusing on writing the three main parts of the text, writers also build on the strategies introduced earlier. 

Lesson 4.1: Move from the Outline to a First Draft
Using their outlines as a guide, students begin drafting their memoirs. They may begin in the middle by drafting the “memorable moments” or by drafting the “before” sections (see Lesson 4.2). Students apply ideas and details from their outlines and techniques discussed earlier. 

Lesson 4.2: Draft the Beginning of Your Memoir
Using teacher modeling and their outlines as a guide, students draft the “before” section of the memoir, describing the context and events leading up to their “memorable moments.” (If the “before” section has already been drafted, this is the time to work on drafting the “memorable moment”).

Lesson 4.3: Draft the Ending
Students draft the “after” section of their memoirs, considering the following questions: What were my thoughts and feelings before the “memorable moment?” What were my thoughts and feelings afterwards? How can I show this contrast in the ending of my memoir? Students reread their drafted endings to determine if they clearly communicate the intended meaning.

Step 5: Revise

Students work with peers and the teacher to ensure that their memoirs convey the experiences and meanings they wish to communicate. Students revise their drafts for clarity of meaning, sequence and speaker. By the end of this step, they will have created second drafts.

Lesson 5.1: Revise for Clarity of Meaning
To revise in order to clarify meaning, students exchange their memoirs with peers who are not familiar with their work. Using a Peer Review Sheet, readers identify the events and experiences in the text, noting one thing that the author has done to make meaning clear and making one suggestion to help clarify meaning. Authors will then devise a written plan to improve their memoirs and begin executing it.

Lesson 5.2: Revise for Clarity of Sequence
Students check for clarity of the sequence of events in their memoirs. They make all necessary revisions, including adding “sequence” words to the text. After revising, students review their memoirs again to check that the sequence of events is clear.

Lesson 5.3: Revise for Clarity of Speaker
Students review the dialogue in their memoirs to check for clarity in organization and meaning. They locate the parts of their memoirs that include dialogue and determine if it is clear WHO is speaking and HOW they are speaking? They then make the necessary revisions.

Step 6: Edit & Publish

During this final step in the unit, students edit and proofread their memoirs for accuracy of grammar and spelling. At the end of this step, they celebrate their accomplishments by publishing their completed memoirs in the class Writing the City e-zine.

Lesson 6.1: Edit for Grammar and Punctuation
Using a guide containing proofing symbols as well as Microsoft Word’s Spelling and Grammar check, students look for errors in their work and begin to make the necessary corrections.

Lesson 6.2: Edit for Tense
After the teacher demonstrates how to review a memoir for consistency in tense, students review their own memoirs, highlighting all of the verbs and then checking the verb tense in each paragraph to ensure consistency.

Lesson 6.3: Publish Your Memoir
With the guidance of the teacher, students use the Writing the City tool to publish their memoirs online. They celebrate by sharing their memoirs in class.

References

Memoir References for Teachers

Bomer, Katherine. Writing a Life. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005.

Calkins, Lucy. The Art of Teaching Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994.

Ehrlich, Amy (Ed.). When I Was Your Age, Volume 1. Cambridge, Ma. Candlewick Press, 2001 (paperback edition.)

Zinsser, William, ed. Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir. Boston: Mariner Books, 1998.

Lattimer, Heather. Thinking Through Genre. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers, 2003.

Standards

The lessons in this project support the New York City ELA Middle School Performance Descriptions for writing a narrative account. (E2c)

According to the Standards, “The student produces a narrative account (fictional or autobiographical) that:

• engages the reader by establishing a context, creating a point of view, and otherwise developing reader interest;

• establishes a situation, plot, point of view, setting, and conflict (and for autobiography, the significance of events and of conclusions that can be drawn from those events);

• creates an organizing structure;

• includes sensory details and concrete language to develop plot and character;

• excludes extraneous details and inconsistencies;

• develops complex characters;

• uses a range of appropriate strategies, such as dialogue, tension or suspense, naming, and specific narrative action, e.g., movement, gestures, expressions;

• provides a sense of closure to the writing.”

Examples of narrative accounts include:

• A biographical account: 4a, 4b

• A fiction or non-fiction story: 4a, 4b, 5b

• A personal narrative: 4a, 4b, 5b

• A historical account: 1c, 4a, 4b

• A detailed travel diary: 4a, 4b

• A news account of an event, fiction or non-fiction: 4a, 4b