A Note to Teachers
Talented teachers instinctively reach for biography when planning their lessons. They know that students are curious about the stories of other people.
In fact, according to research on students’ reading habits, middle-school students enjoy reading about celebrities, sports figures and people similar to themselves who are facing challenging circumstances.
It turns out that reading about other people adds up to a significant portion of students’ leisure reading. If students read about other people on a voluntary basis, the odds are good that you can get your students’ attention with the biographies of people connected to your subject area.
(For details, see “What Do You Want to Tell Us about Reading?: A Survey of the Habits and Attitudes of Urban Middle School Students toward Leisure Reading” by Sandra Hughes-Hassell and Christina Lutz. Winter 2006, Young Adult Library Services.)