What I've learned about the genres and digital media

Learning about the genres was my favorite part of this course! As a future teacher-librarian, I will need to know the genres well so that I can identify quality mentor texts that will serve both teachers and students alike. I’m glad I took this course and know that the knowledge I gained will benefit me in the future.

At the beginning of the semester, I felt like I had some background knowledge on all genres except descriptive writing and letter writing. However, I was only thinking of the genres in terms of books that were written in these genres. While I understood how to write descriptively and had studied letter writing formats as a kid, I couldn’t think of any mentor texts that were written in these genres.

I now understand that the word “genre” refers to more than a published work. I enjoyed learning about the features of each genre, identifying those features in mentor texts, and writing my own examples of the genres. For example, I knew that nonfiction means writing that is based on facts, but I never knew the features of a nonfiction text and how to approach reading them (shout-out to my classmate Stephanie for an amazing genre presentation on this topic!). If I were sharing a nonfiction text with students in my library, I would teach them the features and show them how to approach reading this text like I learned in Stephanie’s genre presentation. The process reminded me of close reading where we went back and reviewed different parts of the text to understand it better. I think doing this would help demystify the concept of nonfiction texts, which many students may find intimidating.

Researching the benefits of letter writing for my genre presentation was eye-opening for me. I never knew that letter writing was valuable because it’s an authentic literacy activity. I read several studies that demonstrated a significant increase in students’ reading comprehension and writing skills through the process of writing and receiving letters (see annotated bibliography on my genre presentation handout for more information). Furthermore, Tompkins (2012) said that “because letters are written to communicate with a specific and important audience, children think more carefully about what they want to say, write more legibly, and are more inclined to use spelling, capitalizations, and punctuation conventions correctly” (p. 130). I am now a firm believer in the benefits of letter writing and would want to incorporate a letter program in my future school, perhaps through a pen pal program.

As future ready educators, I appreciated that part of this course was Hicks’ text on digital media. Despite having a communications/digital media background, there was still much for me to gain from Hicks. In a previous post, I wrote about my realization that anything can be a mentor text, both in print and digital formats. While I’m not intimidated by the prospect of seeking/using digital texts like audio and video in the classroom, I didn’t realize how they could be beneficial as mentor texts to demonstrate the elements of author’s craft. I would like to use them in my library to demonstrate elements of craft and the different genres.

I also really enjoyed Hicks chapter on what makes for a quality digital presentation (especially the “stickiness” factor), a skill that I believe many students lack. If students were tasked with creating digital presentations for a class, I would love to give them a crash course in how to use a platform like Google slides or PowerPoint and provide them with pointers for making a sticky presentation.

After learning about the different genres and types of digital media, I can honestly say that none of them intimidate me. I understand their features and how to evaluate them for elements of author’s craft. I may be hesitant if asked to create an audio or video text, but this course wasn’t intended to focus on how to produce audio or video text. However, Hicks provided me with many sites and free digital tools I can access going forward. I plan to keep his text and will use it in the future to access this information! I will also keep Tompkins’ book on my shelf, especially as a reference for mentor texts in the different genres. Both of the textbooks for this course will serve me well in the future.

My copies of Tompkins' and Hicks' books, with my notes on craft on the covers!

Dear LTED 618 classmates

April 14, 2019 

Dear LTED 618 classmates,

How are you doing today? I’m doing well, but I have been very busy with work, school, and home life lately. Can you believe we are already almost at the end of the semester? It seems like these last few months have flown by!

Tonight, I’m looking forward to giving a genre expert presentation on letter writing. Even though teaching letter writing is not a requirement for teachers, I hope my presentation will open your eyes to the benefits of this form of writing for students of all ages. While my primary mode of letter writing these days is through email communication, I have enjoyed writing traditional letters practically my whole life.

Selfie with a mail truck!

I got my first pen pal in fourth grade through a volunteer pen pal program at my church. Her name was Sharon, we were the same age, and her family was Christian missionaries in Ireland. While I never met Sharon, I loved writing letters to her and learning about her life. She would send me postcards and photos of Ireland, and I would send her little trinkets and other things I thought she would like based on our correspondence. That same year, my elementary school adopted a heavy focus on letter writing. Every classroom was assigned a street name and given a class mailbox. Students were taught to write friendly letters to one another and given time to do so. We even had a “post office,” and would take turns playing the various roles including postmaster, mail clerk, and mail carrier. I remember really enjoying this yearlong project because I liked receiving letters from my friends after I wrote them letters, and it was fun to own the process by working in the “post office.”

Several years later, my pen pal was my cousin Danielle. We would write letters back and forth to each other every summer while she was at her family's cottage in the 1000 islands. I remember how excited I was to receive these letters, and how I became obsessed with printing out fun stationery prints on my home printer and then hand-writing the letters. I still have several of the letters she wrote at home at home, alongside store-bought stationery and envelopes that I use to write the occasional thank you note.

My high school had a mailbox system in every homeroom. Our homeroom teachers would put school communications like cafeteria menus, spirit day schedules, and photo order forms in these mailboxes. My friends and I enjoyed writing notes to each other and leaving them in each other’s mailboxes as well.

As an adult, most of my traditional (aka pen to paper) letter writing is limited to thank you notes or birthday cards. However, I look forward to the day when I can leave notes in my son’s lunchbox for him to read at school just like my mom did when I was a kid.

I hope you enjoy the presentation tonight. I'd love to hear your feedback. If you wish to share, please post a comment here or email me at mshippe0@naz.edu.

Sincerely,

Michelle

Reflections on this assignment

Dear Dr. Jones,

I hope you are doing well. Since I will be presenting on letter writing in class next week, I thought it appropriate to continue to hone my letter writing skills through framing this blog as letter to you.

It’s wild to think that eight months ago I had no concept of how to teach (or develop) reading and writing skills in elementary level students. When we first met, you asked me what grade level I wanted to work with. Since my classes at Nazareth have been geared towards working with elementary students, my eyes have been opened to the possibilities of working with this age group. At this point, I see myself either in an elementary library or a middle school library. I believe there is a level of creative thinking and wonder in these age groups (as well as an excitement for hands-on projects!), that I don’t think I would find at the high school or college level. I also discovered how much I love children’s literature, and reading it means so much more to me now that I can view it from critical lens. I want to thank you for laying the groundwork for my future professional endeavors as I continue down this path.

You’ve asked me to reflect on how keeping a blog this semester helped me reach the student learning outcomes for this course. Looking at these outcomes, I believe my blog has helped me meet them all in different ways. Writing this blog has helped me realize that writing and reading are interconnected processes, as well as the role metacognition plays in reading and writing proficiency (outcomes 4 and 5). While talking in class about a reading is one way to learn, I found that taking the time to write about my takeaways from the readings and how to apply them to my own professional life was highly beneficial. Writing this blog has been my “medium to think,” and reflect on the readings, assignments, and discussions from this course.

My favorite part of this course was learning about the genres (outcome 1)! I loved reading mentor texts as I learned the key elements of each genre and how to teach them. Through this blog, I explored the journal genre, narrative genre, and poetry genre further. I believe my writings on these genres will be a useful resource for me in the future as I introduce these genres to students.

Another big takeaway for me was learning that ANYTHING can be a mentor text, both in print and digital formats. I learned to assess texts by looking for their purpose and form, as well as the elements of author’s craft (outcome 2) or Hicks’ M.A.P.S. criteria for digital texts. While I came into this class with a fairly strong understanding of composition strategies for digital texts (outcome 3) based on my professional work, I didn’t realize that the compositions themselves (ex: video, audio) are mentor texts.

Finally, I made tremendous strides this semester is learning how to help others revise their work, by understanding the role of assessment and evaluation in determining reading and writing proficiency (outcome 6). Prior to this course, I thought evaluating student/peer work meant looking for misspelled words and grammatical errors. Now, I realize that purpose, audience, and form should take first priority when assessing/evaluating student work. The writer’s workshops have helped me hone this skill, and I had the chance to write a little about what I learned on the topic of revising work in a previous post. Since learning about the genres, I can also help look for the hallmarks of the genre in the work. For example, I helped Anna with her argumentative genre piece this week by drawing on what I learned about the structure of arguments/counterarguments from Tompkins.

While this assignment was challenging at times, I’ve never had the opportunity to evaluate academic texts at a critical level on a regular basis like this. I think this was a fitting assignment for this course and I hope to continue using “writing as a medium to think” in the future!

Sincerely,

Michelle Shippers

Bless, Address, & Press No. 2

I love reading descriptive writing. I believe that the mark of a good story is one where the author evokes vivid images in the reader’s mind. After reviewing my peers' recent blog posts, I’d like to follow Hicks' model for peer review and “bless, address, and press (p. 83)” Denise’s blog titled The Power of Descriptive Writing.

Bless: While reading Tompkins chapter on teaching descriptive writing, Denise wrote that “the most beneficial element to me was incorporating sensory images. These senses can really allow the reader to feel like they are a part of your story.”  Tompkins said that young writers often incorporate just one sense, sight. (p. 139). I like Denise’s idea to require students to incorporate at least three senses in their descriptive writing pieces. Tompkins shares a variety of ways that teachers can help young writers craft sensory images (p. 139). In a library setting, I could choose mentor texts that evoke the five senses and use them for read-alouds. Then, I could ask my students to help me pick some of our favorite descriptions from the book and create a list of “sensory words,” that we liked. We could keep these words up on a board for various writing activities, or we could write stories together or individually that use some of these words!

Example of a sensory words chart
Source: Rocky Fork Middle School

Address: I’d like to commend Denise for sharing her personal struggles with descriptive writing in elementary school. Denise believes writing in general was a challenge because she didn’t know what to write about. I believe this is a common struggle for young writers, and one that Tompkins addresses several times in the text. Before expecting a student to write a story (let alone make it more descriptive) students need to understand the elements of story structure which include plot, setting, characters, theme, point of view, and narrative devices. Of course, Tompkins tells us that that descriptive writing is not limited to narrative writing (p. 153), but I think it’s a good place to start before a student can write descriptively.

One way to test a student’s knowledge of story structure is to ask them to retell a story they are familiar with (Tompkins, p. 182). I think this is a great way to get young writers started, first with simple narratives and then with descriptive writing. I think it’s not realistic to ask young writers to write a descriptive piece if they haven’t mastered the basic elements of story structure. If I was working with young writers on descriptive writing and some of them didn’t know where to start, I would differentiate my instructions for those learners. Can they retell a familiar story through writing? Once the students have proven they can write a simple story, then I think it’s appropriate to press them to revise it (as Tompkins says) “using words to paint a memorable picture and evoke a distinctive mood” (p. 136).

A sample organizer that kids can use to retell a story.
Source: education.com

Press: I was glad to see that Denise included two mentor texts in her blog: Skippyjon Jones by Judy Schachner (2001) and The Stranger by Chris Van Allsburg (1986). She writes that The Stranger “would be a great resource for teaching students about how to use and implement figurative language within their writing.” I would like to know more about Denise’s specific ideas to use these two mentor texts to teach descriptive writing. After sharing Skippyjon Jones (which Tompkins says is a great example of word choice on pg. 137) how would she teach her students to write more descriptively using this book as a model?

Kudos to Denise for digging deeper into Tompkins’ chapter on descriptive writing, and I enjoyed the opportunity to add my own insight and feedback!

Source outside class textbook
Holmes, D. (2019, March 30). Entry #9. The Power of Descriptive Writing.  Retrieved from https://holmessp19writing.blogspot.com/2019/03/