Writing a Life: Teaching Memoir to Sharpen Insight, Shape Meaning–and Triumph Over Tests

Memoir is more than writing down memories; it’s a powerful motivator for children to write and revise. Working with familiar material, students explore their lives, learn new and sophisticated elements of craft, and engage deeply with content to uncover personal and universal meaning. By teaching with memoir, you can help students exceed official standards for writing, both in class work and on tests, while also giving them a tool for making sense of their place in the world. In Writing a Life , Katherine Bomer presents classroom-tested strategies for tapping memoir’s power, including ways to help kids generate ideas to write about, elaborate on and make meaning from their memories, and learn craft from published memoirs. She describes dozens of ideas for minilessons, teacherstudent conferences, peer conferences, writing activities, prompts, and revision strategies. She then crosses the literacy spectrum to show how studying mentor memoirs can enrich students’ reading by building strong reading-writing connections. In addition, Bomer presents a curricular unit that prepares students for writing tests by systematically and explicitly helping them transfer the content and skills they develop in writing memoir to the demands of standardized assessments. Every student has a story to share. With Writing a Life , you’ll have the inspiration, the strategies, and the materials you need to help them write it beautifully.