Writing Without Boundaries
My initial reaction of reading this text was horror because I am not fond of reading text books. However, I felt this text related to something I could bring into my classroom. While reading this text I wrote down many different genres to see how many I could collect. I collected a lot of genres. I thought this would be a great way to start off introducing genre into my classroom. I was very excited when reading this text to be able to introduce multigenre activities. However, I feel as though we are so constrained for time that it’s hard to implement this into the classroom. I have conjured different ways in which I could alter my schedule to fit in multigenre activities. Apparently the upper grades have more specials which allows for less teaching time. The planning time is great but it’s so hard to get in everything I need to teach each day. I always find myself going over in my reading/writing lessons. I guess I’ll just have to pace myself better. Anyways…enough of this rambling. I think something I didn’t realize was the time that can be put into this multigenre project. I feel as though thirty minutes every day is hard to include for writing workshops. I would love to do a writers workshop but with the implementation of Empowering Writers it’s very difficult. I love how the students explore informational text in order to find their topic of choice. They get to think a lot about what they want to choose, who the character will be, and from what point of view they want to choose. Whenever I think of writing I don’t typically think of genres. I also had a different concept of genre. I had the broad definitions in my head just the way others have (I’m sure). I also love the numerous discussions (whole group, small group, and individualized). I also loved the idea of using a calendar when conferencing with students. I feel as though this would be a great organizational idea to not only see who you’ve met with but what you’ve talked about. It seems to be a good idea to expose children to literature (greatly) before they begin writing. I feel as though there is a LOT of content that goes into multigenre projects. I work from examples. My students work off of modeling. I try to model most everything we do for this purpose.
The Multigenre Paper
When reading this text I reminisced back to high school days. I remember writing horrible research papers. It seemed as though they were so cookie cutter. The teachers always wanted a certain length. I guess this is so students wouldn’t just write a page and stop writing. I feel as though multigenre papers would be the better way to go. I can see high school students enjoying writing wedding invitations, eulogies, and newspaper announcements. I agree with the college students who were entering this study by thinking that this is a much more exciting method. They were also more hesitant because they didn’t have examples. I feel that modeling is an important part of student performance. Even I need models; it’s easier for me to know what is expected of me. I would love to use multigenre activities in my classroom. I feel as though it may be difficult working with younger students but it could be done. I think we could start out with something as simple as a how to book or a journal entry and then work our way up to invitations, eulogies, etc. I know that I would have to provide lots of examples for the children.
)…I’m leaning more toward this one. There’s so many genres I could incorporate with The Biltmore House.
