One of the comments in the Writing Without Boundaries text stuck out to me: “[Multi-genre writing] encourages writers to find their own voice and culturally meet their needs and expectations as they choose and define appropiate genres.” (7) This really connects to journaling for me as well as hits on a nerve that in teaching writing, I haven’t taught my students how to find and share THEIR voices. I hadn’t really thought about the connection to journaling, but besides the former comment, the author also points out that students can flip thorugh their journals to find topics for their multi-genre study. Being ever so slightly OCD about things being tied together and connected, more ways to tie writing and reading together in a meaningful way is quite appealing.
I also liked the idea of the daily writing workshop within the classroom that connect reading and writing. I do, however, need some suggestions a/o time to think as to how to adjust that to the 7th grade persuasive slant. Should I spend large amounts of time on how to write other genres? Or should I focus my time on persuasive, expository text and write different genres of it?
It was also helpful to read the Moulton article’s presentation of potential problems with multi-genre – one of the most significant for me was how to grade it. I like the idea of grading the learning logs and the whole process, but some rubric would have to exist for the final product for me.
The idea of multi-genre is appealing to me as a 7th grade teacher. It allows for creativity, flexibility, and differentiation with my random grouping of students. The element of choice in topic and product would also be something adolescents would enjoy.
