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.