Entry 11

As I reflect on our class genre exploration this semester, I am reminded of Hicks' (2009) discussion of formative and summative assessment.  During each of the Expert Presentations, I formatively assessed my understanding of and comfort level with reading and writing in each of the genres.  I also further explored the different genres through the genre pieces that I composed.  Now at the end of the semester, I am thinking more summatively; I am evaluating my overall learning about the genres and my development as a writer, which is illustrated through my Genre Pieces Project and portfolio.  At the start of this semester, I felt that while my educational career had provided me with the skills and experiences necessary to be proficient in reading and writing across the genres, I needed to re-learn the genres from an instructional standpoint so that I could begin to prepare for the writing workshop that I will have in my future classroom.  In addition to learning about instructional strategies and activities for using with my future students, I have enjoyed re-learning the genres as an adult and deepening my understandings and developing my skills as a writer.  Also, the opportunity to read books from the different genres during the Expert Presentations helped me to expand my own reading across the genres, gave me ideas for mentor texts to use in my future instruction, and further illustrated for me the importance of the connection between reading and writing.

Hicks' (2009) suggestions for designing and implementing a digital writing workshop combined with our in-class explorations of various digital writing tools has helped me to see the traditional writing genres through new eyes.  It is important for me as a teacher to become proficient with digital writing tools because they will play a large part in my students' writing process, and I will need to be constantly learning because there will always be new digital tools/literacies to incorporate into my literacy instruction.  Learning about collaborative word processors, and Google docs in particular, has helped me to grow as a writer this semester: Google docs enhanced and organized my drafting and revising processes for my Genre Pieces Project and made conferencing with writing group peers much easier.  I also found Google docs to be an extremely valuable collaborative writing tool as Keri and I assembled our presentations for this class.  This is definitely a tool that I plan on continuing to use for my personal and professional writing purposes.  Expository writing was a genre that I had plenty of experience with in school, but I tended to struggle with this genre because I lacked efficient methods for gathering and organizing information to be included in my writing.  After exploring the online options that Hicks (2009) suggests, such as RSS and social bookmarking, I feel better prepared to write in this genre.  With regards to personal writing, I had kept journals before for both academic and personal purposes, but I had never maintained an online journal in the form of a blog.  As someone who tends to over-revise/edit her writing, I struggled with this new journaling format because I did not feel comfortable posting an entry until I felt as though it was sufficiently polished for an expanded online audience.  

As I was exploring the poetry genre with Keri for our Expert Presentation, I realized that my understanding of the different forms of poetry was very limited.  I had never heard of many of the poem forms that Tompkins (2012) discusses, such as list poems, apology poems, “___ Is...” poems, and clerihews.   Persuasive and biographical writing were two genres that I felt comfortable reading and writing in, but that I felt I had the least formal knowledge about when it came to approaching these genres with my future students.  I will definitely hold on to the Expert Presentation packets for these genres because they have great suggestions for instructional activities that I was unfamiliar with, such as collaborative biography writing and the STOP/DARE approach to persuasive writing.

References

Hicks, T. (2009). The digital writing workshop. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Tompkins, G. E. (2012). Teaching writing: Balancing process and product (6^th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill.