MultiGenre Memoir DAY 6 of Implementation

11-3-08

The day before the election and students are excited. Some have decided to do an additional piece on this time in their lives because they feel it is so historic. YAY! The willingness and desire to do extra is exactly why I love this project. So, as students conference with me, I keep a chart of the date, what draft we worked on, and what we talked about. I gave a short mini-lesson/review to one girl today about sentence fragments. I also gave her a handout on sf rules and a quick practice sheet to do and bring back to me. I love writer's workshop because it allows me to do embedded grammar instruction individual to each student.

My mini-lessons come from these conferences, too, and from my observations. Today's mini-lesson was on the author's notes (also called end notes or reflections). I shared a completed author's note from a student's paper, "I decided to write about my memory as a diary because it shows more feelings and emotions. It's just like you write it to keep it to yourself. So I included details I probably wouldn't have if I had wrote a letter to a friend. A diary is like a friend that you tell a secret to and it won't tell no one unless someone reads it. I don't think there's another way I could have written about my love for Strawberry Shortcake. You could explain more, or you can tell more of your point-of-view." Students got in pairs and began thinking-through their rationales for their genre choices. I also asked them to talk about what things their genres didn't let them show about a specific topic.

Finally, I took a few minutes to share some new pieces from my memoir (I had to add to it to meet the requirements for their projects). I read my letter to an advice columnist and the response, and discussed how this genre let me talk about the way people treated me when I found out my daughter had cystic fibrosis. In the response, I was able to write about the ways that I handled the situations, under the guise of "advise." What I like about this genre is that the narrative is still there, but I felt that I could distance myself a bit emotionally.

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