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Multigenre Memoir Day 5

10-31-08

Halloween! What a crazy day to have a controlled-chaos type of project going on, especially since our students are allowed to dress up! Today, students shared the genres they brought in. We looked at a menu from a Chinese restaurant. It had the restaurant's name, address, telephone number, and business hours on the front, as well as an attractive picture. It folded in two, with printing on all possible sides. The courses were broken up into appetizers, lunch and dinner specials, drinks, side items. There were pictures of the more popular items, and each item had a tantalizing description and a price. Then, we talked about how a menu might be used to share a story or a moment from our lives. One boy decided to use a menu to write about his favorite Thanksgiving, rather than the journal format he had chosen. He decided that he could title the menu "A Pendley Thanksgiving, 2007" and that he could, as part of the description, list who cooked the food. I liked the idea! We also looked at a VHS cover and talked about how that format could be a vehicle for conveying a memory. One normally reluctant student got excited as he realized that he could use this format to discuss his love of skateboarding and some of the highlights of this activity in his life. As a class, we decided that a VHS cover has a catchy title and picture on the front, as well as a list of leading actors. On the back, there is a quick summary of the movie--a perfect way to write about memories in our lives that are movie-worthy! I could go on, but I'll stop. I think that this activity is a necessary one, I''m glad I thought of it, and it will be one I do next time on the first day of writer's workshop. A suggestion: students with computers can access a multitude of genre examples in Microsoft Publisher, Works, or just through a simple Google search. And of course these examples are everywhere in the world--advertisements in the mail, newspapers, etc.
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