Students read, analyze, then create their own short Memoirs. Memoirs show that you value student experience, voice, and creativity. Memoirs nurture a safe space in my classroom, so it is excellent for back-to-school. At the start of the school year, I prefer to do shorter readings for two main reasons: 1) to get students back into reading and 2) because the class list is often still in flux. I want a new student to be able to integrate quickly. That said, the Memoir unit works well at any point