Foot: Multigenre Autobiography

I think the multigenre autobiography would be a good assignment for the beginning of the year. Students will just have come back from summer vacation and their brains probably won't be up to par. The assignment doesn't require a lot of deep thought, but a lot can be learned from it. Also, there might be new students in your classroom and this would be an easy way to break the ice and get students better acquainted with one another. I like the idea of giving students some time in class to work on the project, so if they have any pertinent questions you can try to help them out.

One thing that I think would work better when showing the presentations, is to have a time restraint that is the same for everyone. When introducing the project, I think I would say that it can be no more than seven minutes and that if you bring it to class with more than that, then you won't be allowed to present. It's not fair to the people at the end, who only got like five minutes to present and others took like 15 minutes. In order to keep the presentations fair, having equal time before it starts would help solve that. It also is important that you make sure students aren't presenting to try and persuade other students to like what they like. It's OK to think what you liked was the best, but it's not OK to be overbearing and try to make others guilty for not liking it. The last restriction I could think of is that if you're going to ask everyone to write comments about others presentations, then you make sure everyone writes the comments. It's not fair to the students, who spent time writing thoughtful responses to others, yet some of those others didn't even take the time to send any responses at all. If it was my classroom, I would give all of the students enough strips of paper for the number of students in the classroom minus themselves, so they can write their responses on there. Then at the end of the period, the students will pass back their comment strips. The comment wouldn't have to be elaborate and would not be a strict question, just anything to comment on a specific of their presentation. Each student will count their comment strips to make sure everyone has the exact same amount.

One idea I got from watching the shows in class was that you could have students pick three favorites from everybody's presentations. It could be a movie, book, or tv show. Then you could list all of the favorites and have students break up into groups based on their favorite and do a group project on that title. This would further the getting to know you aspect by bringing together what may seem to be different students with an interest in the same move, book, tv show, etc.

Personally I would like to use the inspirational books that I enjoy reading in my future classroom. I read Tuesdays With Morrie in high school and that book has stuck with me since then. I don't want students to think that they come to English class to learn information that they will leave in that classroom and never use again. Books that have life meaning are important to me and I think they would have more application in student's lives than some other texts. While I do love the outdoors and baking, I'm having a hard time incorporating that into the classroom. Even though I would love to, It's not like I can just say OK we're going to bake today. Something that I could do would be to take my students outside for class. I don't know how many schools allow that, but we did it at my high school. The last application I have from my personal autobiography is my love for sports. Not very many people mentioned that in our class, but a lot of students are sports junkies. Just being able to have conversations with students about sports will make them feel valued. Also, I could have sport-like strategies. In high school we use to play basketball and baseball review games for tests. We didn't actually play the sports, but a simplified in the classroom activity like it.