My fourth grade students completed this passport autobiography writing activity last spring, but after they finished, I realized it would make a great get-to-know-you writing activity. Students brainstorm memorable events in their life, list them in chronological order, and write a short autobiography focusing on a few special moments. There are several skills you can easily wrap into this writing activity too. We completed a mini review of time transitional words, and I encouraged students to incorporate words such as until, recently, before, after…
How do students write the autobiography?
- First, students brainstorm favorite memories and create a list. Then, they choose their favorite moments from the list and look for a common theme. Are they all memories with family? Are all the memories related to pets or a certain sport? If students can determine a common thread, it will help focus the writing.
- The passport autobiography templates are small, so it is not an overwhelming writing assignment for students. That is another reason it makes a great back to school writing activity. It is brief and only requires students to recall 2-3 special moments.
- The pre-write pages in the resource provide some sentence frames to support student writing and help identify a “main idea”.
How do you make the passport style autobiography?
- You have the option to print a template that students fill in by hand or use the MSPublisher template and integrate some technology and keyboarding skills into the activity too! The editable template lets you change the cover and United States details, so you can modify it to represent another country.
- Make sure you print photos of each child, save a digital photo that can be inserted into the Publisher document, or let students draw and color a small self-portrait.
- The template uses one 8 1/2″ x 11″ piece of paper only. The page is folded down into the booklet shape.
To download this passport writing activity CLICK HERE. To see another one of my favorite writing ideas for contacting book authors, CLICK HERE.
Happy Back to School!
Caitlin
TheRoomMom
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