Introduction: In this project each student wrote individuals stories based on something they were interested in. All of these stories would be complied in one book, The Book of Us 2015. For my story I decided to write about height and societies/the media's view and role on it.
Real World Writing Purposes: This is what we used when writing our 1 Topic = 18 Topics. It helped us split our main topic into smaller sub topics that we could eventually incorporate into our piece. Each of these topics related in some way to real world writing pieces. For example, Inquire and Explore relates to, blogs, podcasts and literary journals.
1 Topic = 18 Topics: On this sheet our task was to take our one topic, mine being height, and translate it into 19 smaller topics such as, Express and Reflect, Inform and Explain, Evaluate and Judge, Inquire and Explore, Analyze and Interpret, Take a Stand. At first I was completely against this, I felt like it was a bunch of busy work that I wasn't even going to end up using but it ended up helping me a lot in the long run. It branched my topic and thinking into a lot of smaller areas that I ended up using in my final draft. I ended up choosing smaller topics like what society and the media have to do with this idea of "perfection". (IMAGE COMING SOON)
5 Minute Quick Write: In Humanities we have these activities called "Quick Writes" where we are given a topic or leading question and we have more or less 5 minutes to write about the topic or answer the question. These helped me at the beginning when I was barely choosing my topic but later in the project I didn't really rely on it anymore or look back on it too much. (IMAGE COMING SOON)
Down Draft: The first thing I noticed when I reread my down draft was thing it was not finished. I still needed to add my last concluding paragraph. I also noticed it was a bit confusing and a little scrambled. I also didn't have my personal experience in it.
Reverse-Engineered Mentor Text Graphic Organizer A mentor text is where we chose a article that we really liked and wanted to use as a personal example as we wrote our own stories. The mentor text I used was, "What drives kids to commit violent acts?" Looking back on it I see that my piece and my mentors piece both have a leading question throughout the story, My mentors was, "Why do kids do this?" and mine was, "How does society and the media influence our idea of height?"
Graphic Organizers: Throughout this project we went through many graphic organizers such as, "Outline" Tribute Sheet Sensory Images Graphic Organizers Opening lines Graphic Organizer Proofreading Checklist All of these helped in the critiquing process. The most helpful organizer to me was, "Sensory Images" one because using sensory detail makes any story a lot of more interesting and captivating so using that let me know that I needed to add more sensory imagery. The least helpful one to me was, "Opening Lines" because we did this a little late, most people were already happy the line they had, including me so it was a little useless to me personally. I would suggest to just hand it out a little earlier in the project, maybe when they're barely writing their down draft.
Feedback and Critique This project of course had a lot of critique stages to get our stories to where they are today. Personally the most useful critique was the, "Author Led Critique" because the author could really specify where they needed help the most and the person critiquing you could respond directly to that. The least useful critique was the, "Scissors Critique" because since we physically had to cut up our story all the papers got unorganized and since my story was only a page long it was hard to take out pieces. I thought the scissors critique was more specifically useful for students will longer stories. I would just suggest if for the author to have different ideas separately and have the person critiquing you tell you where to add each idea you brought. Other useful critique I got came from Dr. P when he revised our down drafts because he was really specific and where and what to improve / change.
Final Draft I am most proud of just the idea that I was able to inform people that although it might seem like a little careless comment these people are constantly getting them and over time it begins to really bother them because it's not something they could simply change. What I want to add in my next major piece of writing is more personal experiences and examples because I do include some here but I would have liked to have added more.
Reflection: Going into this project I wanted to write about the disadvantages of being short and I thought it was annoying and bothered me but as I began brainstorming and soon writing my story because this seem like on big rant so I expanded my topic into society and the media's view on why they make it seem like being tall is perfect. The difference between my first and final draft is that my first one was me just really getting it all down on paper. It was unorganized and unspecific. In my final draft I made sure to rearrange things and be more specific by adding examples and sensory imagery. In any future writing I plan to add pieces from an article because it makes my story seem much more convincing to the reader and puts them in my shoes. I also liked how I included a quote but changed the quote making it more realistic. If I were to change anything like I said before I would simply include some more personal experience because I did have some but adding more would I believe make it easier for the reader to connect to.