As it gets closer and closer to the day my group will be presenting to the class how to teach Biography's, I have been exploring different articles that could be useful to support our presentation. One of the articles that I found and think could be useful combines ideas from Tompkins on the importance of using mentor texts but through a genre study approach. The article "Teaching Memoir In The Elementary School Classroom" by Tara Gibney, really allowed for me to think more deeply about ways I can indulge future students into a genre, and one that can be considered more complex than other genres. There are two big takeaways that I had when reading this article that I thought can be valuable to our presentation. One, the importance of having time during each session to share their writing, this allows for students "opportunities to discuss problems or roadblocks... In addition, knowing that they have an authentic audience with whom to share their work makes the writing meaningful to the students and motivates them to develop and improve their craft." (Gibney, 2012, p. 245). When thinking about how I can portray this as part of our genre presentation, I'm thinking that maybe, we take time after one of our planned activities to discuss what roadblocks our students might have, just as our peers might have had when creating for example a 6 word memoir of themselves. Maybe even provide a slide of ways that we can help our students through the roadblocks they face and also tie it into how knowing our audience when writing memoirs can help, because these are such short significant events in our life, the writer needs to be really honest for this type of writing which can also be tricky for students.
Supporting Tompkins idea the second big takeaway is, the importance of "students need to read the genre to write the genre"(Gibney, 2012 p. 245). The article showed me in a different light how I can use mentor texts as a tool to teach the genre. In the article the Gibney's class uses their different mentor texts to find examples of what a good lead looks like to assist in their own writing of a lead for their memoirs. I found this to be really interesting, I hadn't thought to look at specific sections of the genre such as the lead to understand that it looks different from other genres such as an expository writing. Also if you've ever worked with a student while they are writing their first couple of sentences in their writing it is very obvious how tricky it can be for them to think of ways to grab their audience, instead of just starting their story like "There was a girl who...". This made me think about the other parts of memoirs that are going to be important for the writer to be able to do such as the use of descriptive language in order for the reader to really imagine the memory of the writers. Tompkins mentions that memoirs "...create engaging narratives by developing powerful images, incorporating vivid details..." (p.232). I'm wondering if maybe during our presentation it would be a good idea to talk about how memoirs, and personal narratives really use their five senses to create the memory. As we talked about last week there are overlapping features in some genres to another.
References
Gibney. (2012). Teaching memoir in the elementary school classroom: A genre study
approach. The Reading Teacher, 66(3), 243–253.
Ah! Nice way to use your weekly blog post to draft out (consider) the ideas from the readings that you are finding significant -- not just as a part of our weekly explorations but also as you think about the key points that you may want to highlight in your group's Genre Workshop.
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