Entry #7

After reading and participating in Carrie & Emily's workshops on biographical and expository writing I feel that I better understand the genres and their benefits. Carrie did an excellent job of articulating the difference between a personal narrative and a auto/biography when we were having difficulty identifying some of the books in our little collection. She said that a personal narrative usually focuses on one particular event in a person's life and then that person develops it into a narrative using literary elements. However, a biography typically outlines multiple events in a person's life. Of course, we agreed that sometimes the lines between these definitions get blurred, but for the most part this is a good rule of thumb. I also thought it was interesting how Dr. Jones said biographical writing has often had ghost writers, which makes it difficult to truly know which type of biography we are reading. For the purposes of teaching the genre I think that Carrie's explanation would be a clear approach and a great starting point for getting students to expand upon personal narratives that they have already started.

While I was reading Tompkins (2008) I was interested in the section on personal narratives because I had never really thought to categorize this sub-genre into my biographical schema. I have always just thought of a personal narrative as being part of the narrative genre, but it does seem to make more sense in the biographical section. I think other times I may have categorized personal narrative as realistic fiction, but that is not necessarily what it is. Now I have a better definition and understanding of what a personal narrative actually is. One quote that helped me to rethink viewing personal narratives as part of the narrative genre is when Tompkins (2008) says personal narratives "focus on real-life experiences, whereas stories are imaginative" (p. 149). This really made me realize that personal narratives are different because they are based on all factual information and narratives all include some aspect of imaginative writing, even realistic fiction. The idea that some teachers refer to all types of writing as "stories" (or narratives, which are imaginative) to younger children is a little bit frustrating to me. I had not really thought about this because it just sounds like teachers are trying to be cute and kid-friendly when they say that, yet in reality they are really doing their students a disservice by not emphasizing that there different reading/writing genres that serve different purposes.

That takes me to my next point about multigenre projects. I noticed that Dr. Jones added this same quote to our class blog, but I too found it to be very profound. We really must encourage students to use multiple genres on the same topic because "Tom Romano (2000) explains that each genre offers ways of learning and understanding that others do not" (as cited by Tompkins, 2008, p. 182). I absolutely love the idea of multigenre projects because I think it takes learning to a new level. It really adds multiple dimensions to a topic of study and enables students and viewers to really "know" the topic in a deeper way. This type of assignment would also be a powerful way for students to include technological formats, like the ones that Hicks (2009) describes. I think that multigenre projects support differentiation by offering choice and multimodal experiences that promote student engagement and achievement. I believe in teaching more about less and I think multigenre projects allow students to study a certain subtopic in more depth rather than trying to cover every fact and detail of the overarching topic. This type of project would also allow them to really see that each genre serves a different purpose and to make connections between them that they might not have if they were asked to produce only one genre.

One last lingering thought that I am still wondering about is this idea of using expository text more frequently with struggling readers/writers and younger children. Recently, I have seen a few articles supporting the use of expository text in early childhood programs. I have to say that I agree with this statement because I feel that expository text is often well organized, which makes connecting reading and writing of this genre easier. I think that this is why expository text is frequently appealing to struggling readers because they do not have to rely on text only to gain meaning from a book. Expository usually includes pictures, charts, diagrams and bolded titles and subtitles, which makes for a more pleasant and clear cut reading experience. It only makes sense that this would be an easier way to organize information for writing as well. In addition, expository text typically involves one topic, in which students may be interested. This can prompt motivation for students who are lacking in this area because if they have the slightest bit of interest in a topic there is probably an expository text that can elaborate on their interest. In my opinion, it makes sense to start teaching young children about expository text because it sets the framework of organizing reading and writing at a young age and prepares them for using these types of text for research purposes in the future.