Obituary Project

With the FCAT Tests quickly approaching, it is important for students to continue to work on a few specific learning challenges. There are three goals we will work to improve with this lesson/project:

¯ Improve conciseness in writing

o Many students add extraneous and superfluous information in their essays and they don’t give the important facts and details. Writing an obituary is an excellent way to improve students’ abilities to give the important details and facts in a concise, yet specific way.

¯ Improve students’ ability to extract the most important details and information from a text.

¯ Expose students to more non-fiction writing (which comprises 60% of the passages on the FCAT tests)

o The more experience the students have reading non-fiction texts and using the information from that passage to answer questions or write a response, the better the students will do when the real tests arrive in February and March.

With that said, this month’s independent project will have you reading a biography or autobiography. You can choose to read about anyone you want, dead or alive. Please make sure the biography is at an appropriate reading level and is not written for elementary students. Also, if the person you’re reading about is still alive, please make sure the book has a fairly recent publication date.

After thoroughly reading the book, you will write an obituary about this person. Regardless of whether they are currently dead or alive, you will write an obituary. According to www.dictionary.com, an obituary is a notice of the death of a person, often with a biographical sketch, as in a newspaper.

To meet the above-mentioned instructional goals, it’s important to follow these guidelines:

¯ Thoroughly read the entire biography or autobiography

¯ Include a picture and name of the person.

¯ Put the name of dates of life/death (if they are still alive you can leave the date of death off)

¯ The obituary must contain as much detail about the person as possible, but you can only use 250 words. You must be concise and clear in your writing.

¯ Be creative but factual.

¯ Please write it in a proper obituary format (in a small column, like in the paper).

¯ Put your name, the title of the book, and the author of the book on the back.

¯ The obituary is due on Thursday, November 20, 2008.

I will be showing examples in class, but you can also read obituaries in the daily newspaper for ideas. We will also being doing an example obituary as a class in addition to other small similar projects that will address the above goals. The evaluation tool (rubric) is also included.

Please sign the bottom part of this form and return ONLY the bottom (keep the top to reference) to me WITH the book you’re reading for approval on Wednesday, October 29. The rubric for this assignment will be on the website in the coming days.

There are some helpful websites that give tips on different ways to write an obituary and what should be included. Here are a few (there are many more out there, these are just the first few I found):

http://ezinearticles.com/?Obituary-Writing-Tips&id=484694

http://www.cremate-usa.com/id59.htm

http://www.postnewsads.com/legacy/writememorial.html

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I _______________________________ will be reading __________________________ by ____________________________ about ________________________________. I will read the entire book and write an obituary on the person. I will turn this in on November 20.

______________________________ _____________________________

Student Signature Parent Signature

Obituary Rubric

1.Obituary includes your name, the title of book and the author (written at the bottom or on the back of the paper)

0 1 2 3 4 5

2. The obituary is set up in columns, follows the style of a typical newspaper obituary, AND has a picture of the person.

0 1 2 3 4 5

3. The obituary contains no less than 225 words and no more than 250 words.

0 1 2 3 4 5

4. The obituary gives details and important facts about the person’s life in a logical sequence.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

5. The obituary is neat and clean. It is typed or neatly written in pen.

0 1 2 3 4 5

6. It is evident you proofread your work. There are few, if any, mistakes in spelling, grammar, capitalization, punctuation, etc.

0 1 2 3 4 5

Total: _____/35 _____%