Reflection of Memo Project

The readings for the memo project were very interesting to read. I liked reading about the different ideas in approaching the teachings of writing. After reading it was difficult to decide which things that I read about that I would address in my memo. Reading through the statements that our groups and others wrote after reading the articles I narrowed my memo down to a couple different main ideas that I thought were the most important in the teaching of writing.
The actual writing about the different approaches to the teaching of writing was not very difficult to me. The most challenging part of the memo project was deciding how exactly I wanted to organize my thoughts and suggestions to the principal within my memo. After deciding on my organization my memo game together much quicker than I thought but it took me a long time to finalize how I wanted to organize my thought in a professional manner to present to a principal.

Inquiry About Writing

So far after reading my articles I have had different feelings after reading each article. While reading the first article I felt very lost because I did not feel I was following what Gunther Kress was saying. I knew he was addressing the idea of genres and made a claim saying that if a student does not understand the genre of something they will not understand the assignment. After talking with my fellow set three members I was able to better understand why he made such a big point of understanding the genre of something. The genre is the background, for example if you do not know a dictionary is for looking up words and you just think it is a book you would start by reading it at the very beginning which we all know is not what you should do when looking at a dictionary.
Overall my favorite article so far has been article three. The claims that Judith M. Jester made about teaching writing were all very good points that I agreeed with. This is an article that I plan on holding on to, to remind me about how I would have liked to been taught in a writing setting and give my students that opportunity. One of the main points she addressed was that as a teacher you should be going through the same struggles as your students because this allows you to relate to the problems and successes they are having. Also I believe this allows the students to appreciate your feedback more because they know you are going through the same problem as they are and that you truly can relate to them. For example I thought it was very cool how Professor Kittle did a digital document as well as all of us because he could tell us about problems and successes he was having with his video which could help us avoid problems he was having or join in his success.