In this unit, personal memoir and biography are contrasted as different ways of telling the story of an individual’s life. 

UNIT TEXTS

• When I Was Your Age by Amy Ehrlich
• What the World Eats by Faith D’Aluisio
• The Story of Muhammad Ali by Leslie Garrett
• Champion: The Story of Muhammad Ali by Jim Haskins
• Various Muhammad Ali biographies
• Twelve Rounds to Glory by Charles R. Smith Jr.
• The Champ by Tonya Bolden
• Who Was Muhammad Ali? by James Buckley Jr.
• Becoming Muhammad Ali by James Patterson and Kwame Alexander
• Ali: An American Champion by Barry Denenberg
• Muhammad Ali Was a Chicken (Wait What?) by Dan Gutman
• Great Lives in Graphics: Muhammad Ali by Button Books

Students begin the unit with When I Was Your Age, an award-winning anthology of memoirs by young adult authors. Memoirs by Laurence Yep, Rita Williams-Garcia, and Avi serve as inspiration for students’ own personal writing. Students also read the nonfiction text What the World Eats, a photo essay documenting the food choices of 25 families around the world with engaging graphics and text. Finally, students compare and contrast biographies of Muhammad Ali. They will first read Champion: The Story of Muhammad Ali, an illustrated biography that will build background knowledge about the famous boxer. Then they will read The Story of Muhammad Ali, a magazine-style biography of the controversial athlete. It is recommended that teachers obtain a selection of additional Muhammad Ali biographies used to compare and contrast different authors’ presentations of information about the same topic. 

FLUENCY TOPICS

Chinatowns, ethnic food, Boy Scouts, the New York subway system, George Washington Bridge, women and boxing, boxing and brain injuries, the Vietnam War

FOCUS

Literary analysis

• Genre features of memoir and biography, including point of view, time organization, and selection of details

Reading comprehension

• Questioning as a component of Reciprocal Teaching
• Question-answer relationships (QAR): contrasts between “right there,” “think and search,” “on my own,” and “author and me” questions
• Contrasting facts / details in different nonfiction texts on the same topic

Decoding

• Using syllable division patterns such as V|CV and VC|V and word parts (prefix, base, and suffix) to chunk and decode multi-syllable words

Writing

• Free writes related to the nonfiction and fiction readings
• Personal narrative inspired by one of the memoirs in When I Was Your Age

Debate

• “Scout’s Honor” (Avi) - Were the boys brave or reckless?
• Were Muhammad Ali’s greatest fights inside or outside the ring?

English language development

• Generating questions about different perspectives
• Demonstrating command of sentence structure