Six-Word Memoirs

I used this lesson with a 15-16 year old bilingual class. 

Lesson Plan:
1. First, I asked students what a memoir is, to define it for me, and to give me examples if they could.
2. I then showed students a short video from YouTube to introduce them to Six-Word Memoirs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBnP0DoGjRI (about 3 minutes)
3. Next, I asked students what words come to mind when they think about how they can describe themselves. I gave them an example (fears) to start them off. This is the list they came up with:
- Dreams, Desires, Relationships/Love, Hobbies, Beliefs, Likes/Dislikes
4. After creating the list, students were asked to write a list of their own, of words they would use to describe themselves. I gave students 3 minutes to do this.
5. I then asked students to circle the most important 2-3 words on their list and, from those, to choose the most important.
6. Students then began free-writing about that word/topic. They were told to write anything they could about their word. This really just allows students to get their ideas flowing. They had 2 minutes to do so.
7.  Finally, they could get creative! For the remainder of the class, students created their own six-word memoirs. I walked around the room to offer help and to assist with any questions they had about words in English.
**For students who were done before others, they were provided with paper and writing utensils to create a small "poster" of their memoirs to hang in the classroom (all students eventually did this).

My experience... 
The students really enjoyed this lesson. They worked really well and remained engaged; many of them even wanted to share what they wrote with their peers! And, to me, participation = a good class. I was absolutely amazed by some of their memoirs -- how interesting, funny, and deep they were.

Hi everyone!

I've decided to make a blog of ideas and lessons I've created or used while teaching English in Spain. Hopefully it will provide you with some help and inspiration!

More posts will be coming, so stay tuned!