MGRP

This project was extremely helpful for a future teacher.  I learned how much work goes into building your units, and figuring out what YOU as a teacher wants to teach.  I think the steps we did this paper in worked well for me, because in order to create genres you had to look at your research, and figure out what you wanted you reader to see.  I would definitely recommend this project to any college student, as well as someone going into education. 

MGRP Chapter 5 & 7

In chapter 5, Allen is discussing how to help students bring subjects alive. One cool idea i thought of was "creating a class character." The teacher had the class answer questions such as, what is the characters age or what does he look like, and when the class comes to a consensus, they have created a class character after answering 34 questions. This helps students realize how much effort goes in to creating a character and their likes and dislikes. This also makes the students experts on their topics, which is what a Multigenre research paper is intended to do.

In chapter 7, Allen is trying to "explore the arts--expanding students thinking." One way she tries to help kids achieve art is to encourage kids to "sketch, paint, and draw to enhance their papers." Artwork is also another way for students to make choices and take risks with their paper. Art is just trying to help us express our emotion towards the topic we have already written about. As a teacher, you cannot grade the students based on their actual artistic ability, but if it makes their paper more meaningful.

Van Sluys Chapter on Invitations

Invitations help students "raise and pursue questions that are important to them and the world, and they need a supportive learning environment in which they are encouraged to ask about and respond to critical issues." (25) As teachers, we need to make time for invitations in our classroom. Through an invitation, the teacher gives students time to challenge ideas and meanings. Invitations will also help develop your students as literate people. Invitations have 4 common features: an initiating experience, a formally presented invitation, possible questions to pursue, and related resources. This is a great activity for your classroom because the investigation that these students are doing is based on their lives, and experiences. One item we need to remember is to make time for reflections. These reflections should be brief, but they give students a chance to write about their thoughts and reactions. I believe that invitations should definitely be apart of your classroom.

MGRP: Chapter 4 Poetry

This reading opened my eyes to using poetry in my classroom. As a child, I was never introduced to poetry, and this is probably why I was unaware that I could use this in my future classroom. Poetry evokes emotions quickly, and this could benefit you're classroom as a whole. As a teacher, one of your main goals is to create a community in the classroom. When you are introducing poetry, ask your students to share their favorite pieces of poetry. This helps the students sharing their ideas, and emotions to their classmates. This helps students start listening and appreciating others ideas. Most students write with experience, so poetry allows the teacher to have an insight of the experiences or ideas that are going on inside the child's head.

Overall, this reading helped me realize that you can use poetry when writing these large papers, and it helps build a community in your classroom.

The Donut House: Real World Literacy in an Urban Kindergarten Classroom

This journal was very interesting to me, and actually relates to my MGRP topic. This journal was inspiring to me because the teacher did not give up on her students just because of the area they were from. She took the notion of empowerment, and created a community in her classroom. "By combining children's natural world of play with real world events, we were able to embed a number of authentic reading and writing experiences in the literacy instructional program." (250) This project of the Donut house did just that. It helped students realize they are apart of their community, and can actually make a difference. Students were able to use language (verbal or writing) to interact with their classmates and also members of the community. At the end of the project, the students felt a sense of accomplishment.

MGRP Reading Chapters 1-3 & 6

This reading helped me understand the rationale for doing a Multigenre Research Paper. I never thought the idea of this paper was terrible, but this reading gave me motivation to complete this paper and really put effort into the genres I present. I like how Allen focused on how the entire paper's topic and genres were up to the writer. This was interesting to me because I am used to getting a topic and researching information that I am not interested in. The skills that the writer gains through writing a MGRP are incredible. "They need to learn how to think both analytically and divergently in order to reach goals, which they set for themselves." (9) This is neat for me to think about because you are creating your own boundaries while writing this paper. The sky is the limit!

Including the different genres in this project allows the students to write from many points of view. I think this is important because there might be many dimensions to their inquiry problem that can be shown in a number of ways.

Overall, I think this book will be helpful in writing this paper.