Ray bradbury biography summary graphic organizers

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Description

Have your students create a collaborative poster and learn about Ray Bradbury in a fun, engaging way!

Your students will create an author biography by researching Bradbury and establishing his profile on a poster.

Students will learn about Ray Bradbury’s life and his body of work as a legendary author.

Additionally, they will discover the importance of collaboration and effective communication.

This is a great addition to any novel study for Fahrenheit 451.

Project Steps:

1) To construct the author study poster, your students will work in groups to conduct research on Ray Bradbury.

2) Students will then transfer their findings to boxes on the poster.

3) Next, they will work together to color or paint the pieces of the poster.

4) Lastly, students will tape together the final product.

The poster is made up of six pieces of paper, which can be printed on regular copy paper or card stock.

Once taped together, the final product will be 28″ x 15″ and can last a lifetime if you laminate it!

This resource includes the following:

• Step by Step Student Directions (PDF & editable word document)
• Author Study Project Rubric (PDF & editable word document)
• Author Study Graphic Organizer for Students (PDF & editable word document)
• 6 Blank Coloring Pages that come together as one beautiful poster (PDFs)
• Ray Bradbury Author Study Answer Key (PDF)
• Example of Final Project: Completed Text & Fully Colored Body (PDFs)

Check out more from my LITERARY LEGENDS Collection:

Skip the typical Ray Bradbury introduction lecture and empower students to find their own interesting facts about the Fahrenheit 451 author’s life with this “Author Bio” print/post-and-teach activity.

This single-page worksheet is a powerful research organizer that’ll get students digging deep into Bradbury’s background.

Please note: This download does NOT include a specific article or links to defined articles. It is an organizer tool for students to use as they conduct their own research. In my experience, students take more ownership of the material when they are the ones to research and discover the elements that make a literary figure’s life fascinating. They’ve seen enough of our introductory slideshows; this time, let your kids do the work and discuss/determine what they think is meaningful about this author’s life.

Here are a few suggested uses for this flexible research tool:

1. Book your school’s computer lab or have students access Ray Bradbury’s biography information on their own devices. Assign students to either work solo or in teams of two. Once the grids are complete, have students share and compare answers in small groups, focusing on the four interesting facts they discovered, the meaningful quote, and the personal/professional obstacle. Then, pull the students into a full-class discussion, having each group present an interesting fact, quote, or obstacle until every team has contributed. No repeats allowed.

This assignment works great as an “into” activity, but it could also be a “through” activity to add variety to your in-class routine as you work through a longer work. If you’re using this as an “after” activity, during the discussion I would also ask how any of the biography elements are reflected in the author’s work/s the class just studied.

2. Assign the worksheet as a traditional homework assignment. Launch the discussion mentioned in #1 at the

“It was like Moses parting the seas.” That was how one eyewitness described the scene. By 2010, Comic-Con San Diego had ballooned from its humble 1970 origins into the massive carnival it is today, with tens of thousands of conventioneers dressed as their favorite heroes and heroines, each hoping to play the latest video game, handle exclusive merchandise, maybe catch a glimpse of an A-list star. Yet in all the chaos, the countless Batmen, Wonder Women, and stormtroopers parted to make way for the biggest name in the building. Over a thousand people would cram into the conference room where he would field questions.

He was no hot young actor or starlet, nor a director of the latest comic book to get a film treatment. At almost 90 years old, Ray Bradbury could only smile as his wheelchair was pushed through the parting throng of gushing, gawking fans.

The scene in 2010 was different from the one in 1939 at the great-granddaddy of all cons, The World Science Fiction Convention in New York. Bradbury, then only 19 years old, had to borrow money from his good buddy (and, later, his literary agent) Forry Ackerman to ride a Greyhound across the country and stay at the local YMCA. At this gathering, the teen rubbed shoulders with the likes of Isaac Asimov and John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding Stories of Super-Science and a leader in the burgeoning science fiction genre, but ultimately failed to sell any of his stories to the numerous publishers he visited.

Thirty-one years later, Bradbury was asked to speak at a new conference venture in San Diego. In 1970, all of 300 people attended the Golden State Comic-Con, as it was then known, and no one knew that it would soon evolve into a world-famous annual comic event, known simply and without need of explanation as Comic-Con. Bradb