Alphabiography examples
- Alphabiography a-z examples
- Alpha autobiography examples
- Howe introduces readers to Joe Bunch through his main character's "alphabiography," a series of essays he has to write about his life, with each topic starting.
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Totally Joe
A Reading Group Guide to
Totally Joe
By James Howe
ABOUT THE BOOK
Assigned to write his alphabiography—a chronicle of his life with chapters headed from A to Z—seventh-grader Joe Bunch is at first uncertain. This English assignment is going to be boring. What if he tells the truth and someone besides his teacher reads it? And the part about ending each chapter with a “life lesson” seems totally lame. But as Joe’s chapters build from “A” for his best friend Addie to “F” for family to “T” for turning thirteen and beyond, he finds his entries becoming increasingly honest and thoughtful. He writes about his crush on Colin Briggs, about being gay, and about a world where acceptance and ridicule can be confusingly intertwined.
The unique personality at the center of Howe’s lively character study is captured through the novel’s unusual format: an “alphabiography” peppered with pages of transcripted dialogue, instant messages and chapter-ending “life lessons.” But perhaps what is most striking about Totally Joe is not the stand-out hair, apparel and attitude of
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Alphabiography Project: Totally You
To engage adolescent learners, teachers must create classroom environments that are stimulating, varied, and most importantly, that connect to students' daily lives. The importance of these connections is reiterated in the NCTE Guideline on Adolescent Literacy, which states: "All students need to go beyond the study of discrete skills and strategies to understand how those skills and strategies are integrated with life experiences. Langer, et al. found that literacy programs that successfully teach at-risk students emphasize connections between students' lives, prior knowledge, and texts, and emphasize student conversations to make those connections." This lesson plan invites students to write about what they know-themselves and their lives. In this way, the lesson focuses on the one subject that is most likely to generate successful student engagement and learning.
Further Reading
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Alphabiography
An alphabiography is an autobiography, often set as an English studies project for high school or college students, consisting of a set of twenty-six short stories or chapters about the writer's life.[1] Each story or chapter has a title starting with a different letter of the alphabet, for example: "Apple growing", "Baseball", "Cynthia" etc. At the end a summation is undertaken.
Examples
The book Totally Joe by James Howe is about Joe Bunch, who is given an assignment to write his alphabiography – although he thinks it will be boring, it turns out to be the gateway for him to learn much about his own identity as a gay young adult.[2]
ReadWriteThink.org, a website sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association, includes a lesson plan for an alphabiography project.[3]