Foot: Multigenre Autobiography Assignment

As a beginner teacher, the multigenre autobiography would be a good assignment for my classroom. I believe it would be a good assignment to do at the beginning of the school year; therefore, I as well as the students would be provided a creative means to get to know each other. Through the multigenre autobiography, students will be able to understand who their classmates are and the things that are important to them. I believe this exercise will be quite beneficial for the chemistry in my classroom. Oftentimes, children believe they have absolutely nothing in common with their peers, but this assignment is a means to broadcast similarities.

I also believe this assignment allows students to start thinking critically about literature and try to apply it in some way to their life. We have learned that we are now in the age of digital learners, and it would be quite interesting to see what different forms of texts has influenced the lives of said digital learners. One thing that I realized while watching my classmates multigenre autobiographies, I naturally wrote down some of texts they included, because I became very intrigued with some of their summaries of the books. It made me want to read more. The multigenre autobiography assignment would be a good way to initiate student's desire for pleasure reading. I would structure the way I assigned the project a little different. Students would be allotted ten minutes, and no one would be able to give oral commentary while presenting. I found that when students gave oral commentary, they dragged their presentation out longer than it should have been with personal anecdotes. If the students were to record their narration, it would be more thought-out and precise. While students are giving their presentations, those that are serving as the audience should collect titles of text that stood out to them, and the ones they would potentially like to read or watch. This way, students are learning about their classmates, but also focusing on furthering their encounters with literature.



Classroom Activities:
We have had the opportunity to test out some of the activities that William Kist included in "The Socially Networked Classroom." While some of the classroom activities seem quite trivial, I believe these activities provide a means for students to relax and wake-up. One of the activities that I really enjoyed is the number game. All the students in the class get in a circle, and without any type of communication with each other, they are to count one at a time to 21, but in an unspecified order. It seems as though this activity is simple, but it becomes complex if students do not pay attention and really read their classmates. I believe this would be a good activity to use as an icebreaker for a morning or afternoon class. It gets students up and active. Another activity that I really liked and I plan on using in my future classroom is fishbowl. Fishbowl can be used to get students into random groups or pairs, but it also involves a great deal of mental activity. For this activity, with a partner, students will write on their piece of paper a word that is in some way related to their partner's word. For example, Student A writes "salt" and Student B writes "pepper." After each group has came up with pairs of words, everyone will ball their paper up and put them into a bowl. One by one, students will randomly pick a ball and try to find their pair amongst their classmates. This activity will wake students up by getting them involved, but it also a means for picking pairs in a more interesting way.