Multigenre Memoir observations 1

education,literacy, teaching, reflection

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10-27-08

Wow! The kids were excited about this project! It was hard turning the class over to the writer's workshop format, even though I fully believe in it, and I've done it before! (update: I now ONLY teach using a writer's workshop format. It has revolutionized my teaching and my students' engagement and therefore their learning)

We started class today with an overview of the project, a discussion of what memoir is, and brainstorms about our lives. Some of the students had a hard time feeling that they had anything to write about, although I stressed to them that their memories don't have to be tragic or adventurous or whatever to be important. I modeled this portion on the board as I did a simple brainstorm of things that had occurred in my life that I might like to write about (using a list format). Students are to do all of their planning and drafting in their learning logs, the spiral bound books they use to respond to reading and the place where they "think."

We discussed the writing process. Students wanted to skip the prewriting phase--don't they always? After about thirty minutes, we did a pair-share, and students began to learn a bit more about each other. Some wanted to take these brainstorms home to continue working.

We finished class by brainstorming a list of possible genres to be used with the memoir: the kids were especially fond of the idea of using a text message format to show a conversation. I also shared some of Jerry Spinelli's Knots in My Yo-Yo String as this book is a published example of a multigenre memoir. He uses narrative and descriptive text, to-do lists, pictures with paragraphs, and other genres to tell of his childhood.

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