ENTRY #13: THE IMPACTS OF BLOGGING

While I was keeping a blog this semester it helped me meet the student learning outcomes of this course by self-reflecting, critically thinking and engaging in reading and writing. During this process I have read and written about all of the genres through the entry's in my blog. By reading Tompkins, partaking in a genre workshop and then creating an entry it allowed for me to explore my understanding of each genre's format and experiences I've had with each through the writing process. While I was writing my entries as well I had to think about the purpose of them and who my audience was, in order to craft the entry respectively. When I was crafting the entries, I had written in the format of a journal writing piece, giving my journal entries a title, writing in first person, holding text that examines my own observations of writing, my deeper thinking of genres, and questions that I had developed for myself as well as my peers and Dr. Jones. The purpose of my entries is evident, being that all of my entries explore my reflections on reading and writing in the classroom with the support of Tompkins and other articles I had read. In my blog entries I had thought through my writing, of strategies that we were introduced to that could be useful to my future students, and ways that I could incorporate them into my scheduled writing block. The biggest way I believe that this blog has helped me meet the student learning outcomes is how much writing I have done through my thinking in the blog entries. Writing has allowed for me to put my cognitive thinking down on paper, and has helped me to sort through the ideas in my head. The ability to have done this thinking through writing in my blog entries allowed for me to comprehend not just the readings but the genre workshops as well. The writing forced me to reflect on the key takeaways, what is the most impactful activities, and what questions am I still left with. It's important as both readers and writings, to have questions because our questions can lead to insightful discussions with our peers. 

I do want to add a note that within this process I have additional learned the impact of using our blogs as a way to form a discussion and gain new perspectives. My peers and myself have gone through this genre exploration and blog writing process together. However it's remarkable to see how we each have taken key attributes to the genre and explored them in different ways through our writing of entries. The weeks that I had gone through and read different blog entries from my peers, It made me have my own ah ha moments, think about a genre in a different light, or even answer a question of mine. I can see how blog entries can be used as a way to start discussion or gain perspective. In the future I hope that I can use journal writing in a way that my own students in the classroom in a way that they're able to reflect on their own thinking through writing, gain perspective from peers, and praise each other for their new learnings. 

ENTRY #12 : DANCING THROUGH THE GENRES

This semester I really felt like I was immersed into different genres through the Genre Expert Workshops. The workshops have really opened my eyes to different directions I can go when I teach the genres to students, and ways that I can support my students in some of the challenges they might face. When I started this semester I thought I knew the biography, and persuasive genre pretty well but I have developed a greater understanding of due to the way I was engaged during workshops. When I had dived into the genre of biography's I had found how complex the genre can be for students to write, specifically into the autobiography and memoir aspects of biography writing. In order for students to write about themselves they really need to be able to not only pick out the significant moments in their lives to write about but use the language that will help their reader visualize and become a part of that scene in their life. My understanding now of the impact and use of descriptive writing in memoir and autobiography, will help me to support my students. Depending on the age it could be helpful to have students use their five senses in helping them describe the event, for older students focusing on not only five senses but word choice will help them create pieces where their reader is immersed into the text. 

During Makayla, Sam, & Taylor's workshop on the persuasive genre, my eyes had opened to the way that we can immerse students into the genre. One of the activities that really had me thinking about how students can engage in the genre is analyzing digital or print advertisements. Students know a days are online frequently, and come across persuasive texts multiple times a day, even if they don't realize it. I think incorporating this activity into my classroom one day during persuasive writing workshop can really help students to understand the purpose of persuasive writing and how it's used in our society. The activity supports our students in understanding pathos, logos and ethos as well because they can make those connections based on how the text tried to persuade the reader to partake in, buy a product, etc. 

During this semester the analyzing of mentor texts has supported my knowledge by allowing for me to see how the authors format the genre, and the specific characteristics that are included in the texts. For example in the persuasive genre, I had read the book "The Day The Crayons Quit". I had never read this text before but it was directed towards persuading a kid why they shouldn't use as much of that color crayon, using pathos and logos. Students could analyze the text for how the crayons were trying to persuade the kid, to help write their own piece, using their knowledge of what are affective ways to persuade. It was interesting to see how genres can support other pieces of writing as well since this text was in the format of a letter, I think that when students can see the interrelationship between the genres their writing becomes stronger because they have developed the parts of the authors craft already. The use of mentor texts this semester has also allowed for me to have ideas of texts that I would like to use with my students while teaching the genre. During the letter genre, I had read the book "Diary Of A Worm", I thought that this would be a text that would be really supportive to my younger students. One, because they have the background knowledge of what a worm is, and its function in life and two, the text formats each page with a date the worm is writing and writes the letters directed towards a specific person. Text like these for younger students helps them to think about how they should write their letter but also understand the message of the text. 

ENTRY #11: A Deep Dive Into Poetry

In preparation for this weeks genre expert group, I really took some time to do some self-reflection with my own engagement with poetry. As a student myself I found poetry to be a drag, and I never quite understood the purpose. The big question to me was, why would someone write in this format?, and why does it feel like there are so many hidden messages? Why can't it be direct, instead of having to make analyze the meaning? I kind of related poetry to Jazz, both holding mysterious, deep meanings that I just didn't understand. I think that the reason the genre frustrated me so much at the time is because it forced me to be a critical thinker. I believe I was in 3rd or 4th grade, we were working on creating poems and our teacher had shown us some of Robert Frost poems. One in particular that I remember is "Nothing Gold Can Stay", I was so frustrated because I could read the words in the poem without any problems but I didn't understand what I was reading. In Tompkins (2012) chapter 7 on Poetry writing she mentioned that poetry is a "concise form the evokes readers emotional responses... poets choose words carefully and structure lines and stanzas in creative ways." (p.156). I'm wondering if maybe I hadn't challenges with understanding the meaning because I wasn't grasping the emotions that the author of the poem was portraying that nothing stays perfect forever, because at that age I wasn't able to see any challenges in life.

However, even though my experience with poetry wasn't necessarily enjoyable for me, I have witnessed in elementary schools the positives and excitement it can bring to students. I substitute at Thornell Elementary in Pittsford, and this month is poetry month, every morning a couple students come over the loud speaker and read a poem that they really like, or that is an original of theres. I think this is a great way to immerse a whole school into the genre, it also shows students that poetry can look and sound different. As Tompkins (2012) mentions in chapter 7 "Many students have misconceptions about what poetry is... they think poetry has to rhyme, or they're unsure how it should look on a page." (p.171). I think that when students are listening in the morning they can hear how different each poem is, some rhyme and some don't, some evoke happy/excited emotions while some bring emotions of sadness, anger. I guess a question of mine as a teacher would be is their a line of what emotions our students should be guided to write, or because part of the authors craft is being able to evoke emotions in the writing we allow our students to write portraying any emotion they desire? 

ENTRY #10: Round of Applause for Amanda!

 

After looking through peers blogs this week, Amanda's blog draw me in! I first would like to bless Amanda on the way she's developed her blog. When viewing Amanda's blog, the text font used is easy to read, the colors make me feel relaxed, making my mind ease, I was also able to easily navigate through different articles. One other touch to Amanda's blog that drew me into the entry that I read through is her creation of titles that are captivating to the readers to click on to read. I had clicked on Amanda's Entry #9 titled YOU HAVE TO READ THIS BLOG, after reading through the entry I really appreciated Amanda's use of lots of examples of her past experiences trying to be persuaded, and observations of what she's seen being down in the class using persuasive writing. I found myself able to really connect to her experiences as well, when Amanda had mentioned, being most influenced "by Pathos- cue the song "In The Arms of an Angel", it made me stop and think about all the times that I was watching tv and immediately had to flip the channel when I heard the song start because I also feel that I'm most influenced by being persuaded though Pathos (Emotions). In conjunction with this idea that maybe a person has an appeal that is most likely to influence them, It made me think of the identity's of our audience when we write. 

 In Tompkins, chapter 11,  she writes, "Writers' ability to tailor writing to fit their audience is arguably more important in persuasive writing than in other genres..."(p.252). The combination of Amanda's blog and Tompkins quote I would like to address the question, "Does our identity's effect the appeals we use when writing a persuasive piece?" or "How might knowing the identity of our audience tailor the appeals that we use when we're using the persuasive genre to write?". Amanda had mentioned in her blog, that during her undergraduate placement, she observed a 3rd grade teacher guiding her students to writing a persuasive letter to the principal on why extra recess time is important. When I was thinking about what these students reasons might have been I was thinking they might mention, more recess time means more exercise which keeps them healthy, or maybe more time to play with their friends makes them happy. These students have different identity's from each other but the identity they have in common is their kids and their students, their responses probably are more likely to have appeals to pathos and logos because at a young age you tend to think of your own feelings first before thinking about how it can be beneficial to someone else as well. However thinking of a response that might come from a student that might identify as having ADHD maybe a written response would be, "it would help me to get my energy out so I can focus on my work better".  Of course this is a hypothetical responses I played out as a way to try and clarify my exploration of this question that was inspired by Amanda's entry. I would be curious to hear what Amanda's thoughts would be on the impact of our persuasive writing pieces and the impact our identity could have on that.