Erika's demo on multigenre projects was exciting and also made me think of how putting constraints or parameters around things produces really creative work. It seems paradoxical and counter-intuitive to me. But having to think of the questions about democracy in terms of the genre conventions of a personal ad or a restaurant menu made me think deeper and in more flexible ways. But then having all of those choices of different genres was exciting too.
I really liked that Erika gave listeners a specific task when we were sharing. I find that my students often seem to only listen with one ear or don't listen with purpose. But having us write down words or phrases that we heard from our partner's genre piece gave us concrete feedback for us to share.
With Sarah's demo, I loved the progression of seeing and interacting with so many different pieces and identifying purpose and audience for each. Starting off by being able to see student examples (the two videos) and analyzing the purpose and audience segued nicely into identifying the persuasive devices in the print ads.
I thought that the discussion around everyday situations and the purpose and audience of those helped illuminate the distinctions between genre, purpose, and audience. Erika described how the cookbook authors (genre) could write to beginning bachelor cooks (audience) or to more knowledgeable cooks (Julia Child's books) and how the purpose would look differently for each. Wendy described how as a customer, a retail store focuses on so many details like the store layout and what store employees say, etc. That opened my eyes to how prevalent those ideas of genre, audience, and purpose are in the world around us. It's not just something specific to a small type of writing. I used to complain and think that the RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, Topic) acronym was so formulaic and artificial but apparently I was the one that was thinking too narrowly.
Working in our small groups to act out our PSA skits was fun and engaging and watching them was hilarious as well! I felt like we could really get into bringing these persuasion devices to life. This would work so well to tie into a Civics unit / Animal Farm unit as well.
I agree Jessica that Sarah started out her demo really well by showing the two student examples. It set the stage for greater understanding and contemplation. Although we discuss the terms in class the RAFT acronym is new for me- thanks Jessica. I also liked the fun and engaging PSA skits. It felt really good to laugh so much.
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