The Multigenre Paper

After reading about what a multigenre paper is and viewing some of the examples, I am pretty excited to get started on my own. Though I was unfamiliar with the multigenre paper prior to this course, I can easily see its value. Looking over all of the examples, I wonder why I have not heard of this type of paper before. I love that students are able to make this a personal project and are encouraged to be more creative than they would if writing a traditional essay. I think that this type of project encourages a very high level of thinking in that students must connect topics to themselves and the world in general. Their ideas about organization and content validity must also transfer clearly to readers, making the task of putting the paper together a bit more challenging. In this way, students are responsible for fluidity, and must clearly represent how each genre fits logically into their paper.

Though I looked over several examples of the multigenre paper, the one that stuck out most for me was the Modern Groom paper. I felt that the author of the paper did a fantastic job assembling the pieces and really made the content flow the way that a magazine would. This example helped me to think about the importance of tone in this type of project. Though I've never read a magazine designed for males, I thought that the author did a good job of mimicking the style of Cosmopolitan, only intending men as the audience instead of women. I could tell that the author tried to appeal to men and had the quick and witty tone of this type of magazine. I also liked that the author chose to incorporate pop culture (such as The Simpsons and MC Hammer) as a way to make the magazine appealing and commercialized.

Again, I am very excited to work on my own multigenre paper. I also am glad to have learned about this project so that I will be able to use it in my own classroom someday!

Sensory Images in Writing

This week, I continued to enjoy reading from Harry Noden and Jeff Anderson. I feel that both authors are really teaching me a lot. (I also think that my future students will benefit significantly from my experience with these books.)

Noden was the most interesting for me this week. I love to read his strategies at the end and imagine how they could be used or modified in a classroom. Most of all, I loved Noden's thorough descriptions about how to develop images in writing. Though the concepts that he expressed may not have been completely new to me, he succeeds in explaining what they are and how to put them into use. For example, Noden discusses "image blanks." Though the very description of an image blank could be vague and confusing, Noden follows by describing several ways to prevent "firing an image blank" by giving examples and eventually moving through his some of his brushstrokes to enforce his meaning. I particularly found Noden's examples of the "Lost Friend' and "One Last Wish" poems. These poems completely demonstrated that simply telling is not enough in writing. Feelings must be shown and described with sensory details. 

In my mind, sensory details are the core of teaching students how to express themselves better in writing. Asking a student to describe an idea's appearance, smell, taste, sound, and texture seems to be a quick and effective strategy in expanding the way that they approach writing. 

One of my favorite strategies from Noden this week was "Strategy 2: Paint the Personality Behind the Clothes." I think that beginning a story with an image that can be interpreted in many different varieties would really be a great exercise in a class. Students would have the opportunity to get really creative and would probably enjoy hearing the versions from their classmates to see how different their stories turned out. 

As is typical, Anderson was very helpful and specific in his writing. I really liked all of his information about comma problems and his solutions about how to fix them. Commas, though seemingly simple to use, are not as user-friendly as they appear. Students become confused about all of the different rules, and I think that Anderson helps to prepare teachers for the mistakes that they will see. I liked his discussion of FANBOYS, and how this mnemonic, though helpful, can inspire more confusion as students begin to use it. I also took note of Anderson's brief discussion about sentence imitation and thought that it connected to Noden's reading for last week. 

On a more trivial note, I have been struck by Anderson's choices of mentor texts as I have been searching for my own. I love that he uses a variety of texts, many of which students may identify with better than others. Though I am not a huge fan, I think that using Jeff Foxworthy's work as a mentor text is a really great choice. Many students identify with humor, and seeing that it has a place in writing could really fuel their interest.