Post 1: Romano, Dornan, and Atwell

The posting for this week covers three different texts, Blending Genre, Altering Style, (Romano) Within and Beyond the Writing Process, (Dornan) and Chapter 3: Getting Ready (Atwell). The first book I chose to read was Blending Genre, Altering Style by Tom Romano. I thought this book did a great job of explaining the purpose behind, the use of, and the how-to to completing a multigenre paper. Skeptical I first, I found myself immersed in the book and cycling ideas in my head on how I could use this concept in my own teaching.

Immediately after I finished the book, I contacted my cooperating teacher and introduced the idea. At first, the cooperating teacher expressed some concerns, primarily on the timing and the structure. After showing her the examples in the text, she too got excited about the project, envisioning it to tie in with the enduring understandings from the reading of Red Badge of Courage and various slave narratives, which is the first half of the 10 weeks. Aside from introducing and teaching the different genres, she felt it would be an engaging process, “Kids like to move quick, and they like to see results. I think the idea of the multigenre paper offers both, a steady flow from one genre to the next and a connecting product at the end.” One of the aspects of the paper she seemed to be particularly interested in was the artistic component, which connects with Romano’s statement that, “Art is an integral part of a school’s learning culture” (1). Art is also an entertaining and differentiated means of expressing thought and vision. Romano argues that “After junior high school –sometimes before –school is devoted to teaching students to think paradigmatically… many teachers do not consider writing poetry or fiction cognitively rigorous” (22). I think many teachers would also include art in the “non-cognitively rigorous” category. I would tend to disagree. I think art can bring out a different kind of creativity, and if paired with writing about the art, may help students improve their emotion in the writing. Overall, I thought Romano’s text was very interesting and I would be more than willing to incorporate it in my classroom.

The next text we read was a few chapters from Reade Dornan’s book, Within and Beyond the Writing Process. As with Romano’s text, I thought this was a great book. I really felt this text brought me back to the fundamentals of writing and the writing process. I was particularly fond of the sections entitled Writing is Thinking and Writing is a Socially Constructed Process. Both of these sections talk in detail about how writers develop and how important that process of development is, both to the author personally and the author socially. I think students enhance their writing if they have an audience to write for, aside from just the instructor. This ties in a little with what Tracey was saying in our other class, “Their assignments need purpose”. Giving the students a purpose to write may offer them an opportunity to experience success in their writing, which may lead to life-long enjoyment.

Chapter 3 of this same book went into much more detail about the writing process itself, which, I felt, offered some good insight into the pros and cons of teaching the traditional writing process, as well as offering insight into newer models. I like how the chapter went through the whole process, from discussing the shift in the process from form and correctness to the process itself, to the importance of classroom environment and the impact of publishing students work. The chapter was very detailed and offered a great set of tools to follow when teaching writing. Kudos to Dornan!

The Atwell article was very interesting in the approach it took to establishing a Writer's Workshop, and to have reading and language arts as separate entities really made me think more deeply about the subject(s). Are they really that different? In so many ways, I agree and to have time to teach them separately is an intriguing concept. I wonder which order would be most effective to teach first, or if the two should be taught simultaneously?

Link of the week: http://www.sheboyganfalls.k12.wi.us/cyberenglish9/multi_genre/multigenre.htm showing an example of a Multi-genre web.

Below is a short version of a possible multigenre project. Enjoy: