Summary
In this lesson, students explore the essential questions "Who am I?" and "What makes me me?" through multimodal narrative writing. For this creative composition, students engage in preliminary reflective writing and in an up-close look at their thumbprints. Throughout this creative writing process, students are also working with figurative language, question generation, and visual composition. Ultimately, students will compose a multimodal narrative that encourages visual literacy and re-think how a personal narrative can look. This lesson includes optional modifications for distance learning. Resources for use in Google Classroom are included.
Essential Question(s)
Who am I? What makes me me?
Snapshot
Engage
Students complete a quick write and engage in a Think-Pair-Share session, then watch two videos about fingerprints.
Explore
Students reflect on and respond to the Thumbprint Autobiography handout. Using the Question Generating strategy, students will compose their own questions to answer in their Thumbprint Autobiography.
Explain
Students create an original Thumbprint Autobiography multimodal narrative using the pre-writing from the Thumbprint Autobiography handout and their own Question Generating questions.
Extend
Students publish their narratives by presenting their final work in a modified Gallery Walk to their classmates.
Evaluate
Students revisit their initial quick write and compose an additional reflective extension.
Materials
Lesson Slides (attached)
Thumbprint Autobiography handout (attached; one per student)
Thumbprint Autobiography Student Examples handout (attached; one per student)
White printer paper
Writing materials (pencils with erasers, colored markers, pens)
Engage
30 Minute(s)
Begin by displaying slide 2 of the Lesson Slides to introduce the lesson, then slide 3 to show the essential questions. The learning objectives are listed on slide 4. Ask students to complete a quick write as a bellringer over the following questions:
What makes you unique?
What sets you apart from everyone else and makes you you?
Give the students five minutes to write, then ask them to share one piece of information with a partner by using the Think-Pair-Share strategy.
Show slide 5 and invite students to do a quick write as a whole class. Ask students which part of the human body is completely unique to each individual. Invite them to consider fingerprints. Tell students that they will be examining their thumbprints and invite them to become acquainted with their unique prints by watching two videos.
Display slide 6. Play the first video, How to Compare Fingerprints, until the 1:30 mark. Pause after each fingerprint part (the delta, loop, arch, etc.) and ask students to find these elements on their own thumbs. As students are examining their prints for each different part, they may want to show and compare their findings with their Think-Pair-Share partner.
Watch the second video all the way through. It is titled Why Are Fingerprints Unique? It provides more context about the human fingerprint. This video will help students think more deeply and further about what makes each person’s fingerprints unique.
Explore
40 Minute(s)
While it may seem counterintuitive, rather than writing first, introduce students to their Thumbprint Autobiography. Before they begin to create their thumbprint, share the Thumbprint Autobiography Student Samples. Since this is a multimodal composition, the creation of the thumbprint takes a bit of time. An in-depth analysis of the various grooves and elements of each other’s thumbprints is important for them to produce their autobiography. Display slide 7 and distribute the Thumbprint Autobiography handout. You may prefer to have students use a sheet of paper to create their thumbprint.
Give each student a sheet of white printer paper. Ask them to draw a large oval, using pencil and pressing very lightly, taking up as much of the page as possible, getting as close to all four sides as possible. This oval will serve as the border of the student's thumbprint. It is important to draw lightly because this line will be erased later.
Once they have drawn the oval, ask students to fill it in with the lines of their thumbprint. The best way to start is to the find the element on the thumbprint called "the core" (shown in the first video) and draw that. The core is the central, "main event" of the thumbprint, and is a good place to start so that all other lines can radiate from it.
Advise students to find any other interesting elements of their thumbprints that stick out as unique and to draw those in next. Remind students that everyone is unique and therefore their thumbprints will look very different from each other; some students may have whorls and deltas and others may not.
Give students time to find all of the fascinating elements of their thumbprint. Walk around the room and assist where needed. During this stage, the teacher will likely perform up-close observations of student thumbprints and help to transfer the lines to their paper. Continually remind students to draw in pencil very lightly since the lines will be eventually erased.
The last step is to fill in the rest of the thumbprint with lines that will hold the writing. These lines should follow the same flow as the first shapes drawn in. They should repeat on top of each other. The space between the lines will vary in width, but it is best to keep them similar to the width of a sheet of notebook paper. If the space is too thick, there will not be enough room to fit the content, and if the space is too small, there will be too much space to fill and too little room to write comfortably.
Once students have completed forming their thumbprint, have them set it aside. Using the Thumbprint Autobiography handout, have students pre-write for this multimodal narrative by answering both the guiding questions and generating their own.
Until this point, students have been brainstorming and getting immersed into the theme of individuality. Moving into the stages of more concrete writing, this would be a good time for the teacher to introduce or review the narrative mode of writing, and to distinguish an autobiography from a narrative. Emphasize that autobiography is a work written by the author about themselves. This autobiographical narrative describes the student's life experiences—highs and lows, ins and outs.
Inform students that the writing they are doing will be used to compose their narrative. A narrative tells a story. An autobiography gives information about the life of the author. The content written for this composition will tell the story of the writer. There are guiding questions that may be considered and answered on the attached Thumbprint Autobiography handout. You may also invite students to engage in the Question Generating strategy to compose questions of their own to answer.
First, ask students to write out on a separate sheet of paper the answers to the guiding questions in complete sentences, providing as much information as needed to tell their story. As a homework or end-of-day assignment, students will go a step further and generate their own questions to answer for their narrative. For this lesson, the Question Generating strategy should work like this:
Give students an element of inspiration on which to focus. For this lesson, provide examples such as either guiding questions or an image of a fingerprint displayed at the front of the room.
Next, ask students to generate questions that pertain to their story. These should be questions that they not only would be able to answer about themselves but would be passionate about answering. Students may start by looking for a gap in the existing guiding questions. After giving students time on their own to compose their questions, set aside time for Think-Pair-Share discussion.
Explain
40 Minute(s)
Display slide 8. Now that students have their blank thumbprint ready to fill and the content for their autobiographical narrative written, it is time to combine the two. Ask students to use light pencil strokes to fill in the lines of their thumbprint with the answers to the questions provided and generated.
After all content is drawn in pencil, instruct students to go over the with permanent color or pen. There are many options to use here, including felt tip pens, colored pencils, and thin-tipped markers. Some students may choose to go over most of their words in black, and save bolder colors for specific words, symbols, or figurative language.
Display slide 9. Remember that it was important to draw the initial lines lightly in pencil. Once all content is written in permanent ink or color, the student's last step is to go back over the initial pencil lines and erase them, leaving only the lines of their unique thumbprint formed by their story in their own words.
Extend
30 Minute(s)
As an extension, provide students with the opportunity to display their Thumbprint Autobiographies and to read the work of others in a modified Gallery Walk. To make this conducive to a class period and physical layout, desks may be arranged in small or large groups (one large circle also works well). Display slide10. Ask each student to place their Thumbprint Autobiography on their desk. This activity works well with music playing. Play calming music for the period that students are reading the project in front of them, then when you stop the music, instruct them to move to the next desk to read a new narrative. This modified Gallery Walk works similarly to musical chairs, except in this version the opportunity is presented for students' stories to be read and learned.
Evaluate
10 Minute(s)
Display slide 11. Ask students to complete this lesson by returning to their first quick write:
What makes you unique?
What sets you apart from everyone else and makes you you?
Students should revisit their writing and extend it by writing about what they learned or remembered about themselves during this process. This final reflection can simply be an extension that remains in a composition book, or they can turn it in as a full paragraph to accompany the final Thumbprint Autobiography.
Resources
K20 Center. K20 Center 5-minute timer [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVS_yYQoLJg&list=PL-aUhEQeaZXLMF3fItNDxiuSkEr0pq0c2&index=8
K20 Center. (n.d.). Gallery walk / carousel. Strategies. https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/strategy/118
K20 Center. (n.d.). Google classroom. Tech Tools. https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/tech-tool/628
K20 Center. (n.d.). Question generating. Strategies. https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/strategy/167
K20 Center. (n.d.). Think-pair-share. Strategies. https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/strategy/139
K20 Center. (n.d.). VoiceThread. Tech Tools. https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/tech-tool/2932
Life Noggin. (2015, January 22). Why is every fingerprint unique? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-OI95dpNSM
Ray Forensics. (2010, November 22). How to compare fingerprints - The Basics [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrpTqKkgygA