R/W post #12

    As we complete the semester I am looking back upon my learning throughout reading improvement through written expression. Coming into this course I have previous assumptions about certain genres including letters, persuasive writing, and bibliographies. I was wildly unaware of how many different types of writing there were included in one genre. For example in the letter genre I discovered that there are friendly letters, emails, post cards, business, and simulated letters. I had previously just believed that they were all the same but now understand how the writing changes between which type of letter it is. A friendly letter and an email will have a different voice, tone, and audience. During the persuasive workshop I was able to explore deeper how ethos, pathos, and logos plays a role in persuasive writing and how I can incorporate this into my teaching of this type of writing. Throughout the Tompkins readings and the workshop I was better able to distinguish the differences between bibliographies, autobiographies, personal narratives, and memoir. Exploring these genres deeper helped me better understand how to teach these kinds of writings to students and how to model these types of writing. 

    Something I truly loved about this class was the use of mentor text each week. Taking the time every week in the library to search for books made me find a plethora of new diverse texts. As a current undergraduate student I do not have my own library yet, so seeing all of the different books everyone brought in gave me ideas of what books to include in my future library. Through the use of the mentor texts in each genre workshop I began to better understand how I can use a genre text to model a specific type of writing and then also as a way for student to build off of their knowledge. One of the mentor texts that I really liked was for persuasive writing, it was called "I Wanna Iguana". I saw how this book can be used to demonstrate the authors craft used in persuasive writing but then it can be further extended upon to have students practice persuasive writing by having them writing a piece about a pet they want. All of the mentor texts have provided me with great resources to help my students best succeed as young writers. 

    Overall I have truly enjoyed this course and learned so much about myself as a writer and as a teacher. I now feel more confident to pursue my masters degree in literacy, and more confident in my teaching abilities in regards to writing.