1. Tuesdays with Morrie

2. The Autobiography  Story of a person’s life up until the point he or she is writing it  A narrative composed from personal experience  Always non-fiction  More focused in on the subject (Source: Nonfiction Genre Memoir)Nonfiction Genre Memoir  Yours would include much or all of the following:  Information about your family before you were born  Your babyhood and childhood experiences  Your school years  Your college years  Your working years  And so on, plus information about the people you know, the places you’ve lived and the effects of those people and places on your life  Notable examples:  Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave  Me by Katharine Hepburn

3. The Memoir  Story of a portion of a person’s life, or a theme from a person’s life (source: Writer’s Digest) Writer’s Digest  A narrative composed from personal experience  Always non-fiction  More focused on story  Protagonist could be one of many people in the story  More focused in on the subject (Source: Nonfiction Genre Memoir)Nonfiction Genre Memoir  Yours would include memories of a specific time, related series of events or theme in your life  Your adventures at summer camp (time)  Your relationship with a parent (series of events)  Your struggle with a disability (theme)  Notable examples:  All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot (veterinarian)  A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer (child abuse survivor)  Night by Elie Wiesel (Holocaust survivor)  On Writing by Stephen King (bestselling author)

4. Characters  Morrie Schwartz  Professor of Sociology. Author.  Mitch Albom  Sportswriter. Author of several fiction and non-fiction books. Tuesdays with Morrie is the story of the visits that Mitch paid to Morrie in the months before Morrie died.

5. Tuesdays with Morrie  Memoir  192 pages  Published in 1997 by Doubleday  Tremendously popular bestseller  Television movie produced by HARPO (Oprah’s production company) in 1999

6. What is ALS? ALS stands for Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis also known as Lou Gehrig's disease –Lou Gehrig was a famous baseball player who played for the New York Yankees. Latin roots at work: A means ________ Myo means Muscle Trophic means nourishment

7. Morrie & ALS ALS is a disease that is caused when areas in a person’s spinal cord start to degenerate (fall apart) and nerve cells break down. This breaking down of neurons that control movement “eventually causes their demise” because the brain loses the ability to cause and control voluntary muscle movements. (raising a hand, stepping off a curb, etc.)

8. Morrie & ALS ALS is not something that is “Caught” like a cold. One type is “familial” meaning it can be passed through families. The other type “sporadic” is seemingly random Currently studies suggest in the US there are ~5,600 cases of ALS (that’s out of 317,000,000 people total)

9. Unit Overview  Study the memoir and other non-fiction genres  Read the book (mostly) in class  Answer questions (mostly) in class  Learn vocabulary (mostly) in class  Write a personal essay on a mentor’s effect on your life  Do some informal research, write a paragraph and provide an informal presentation  Enjoy Tuesdays with Morrie (1999)

10. Pre-Reading  Understand that, though it’s true, this memoir will be just as much a story as a fiction book  Use active reading skills:  Research names, places and terms that you don’t know  Look up vocabulary words that you don’t know  Take notes, especially if you are reading for an assignment or project  Source: Nonfiction Genre MemoirNonfiction Genre Memoir

11. Pre-Reading  Get comfortable with your book!  Open it  Turn the pages  Read some of the pages  Are the words difficult? Easy?  Spoiler alert: Morrie dies!