Meghan’s Weblog

Finding Memorable Moments article:

The changes in the initial “seeds” that these children wrote to their final memoirs were amazing!! It was neat how the students orally told stories to a partner to get some initial ideas flowing, which is much easier than just sitting down and writing.  The interaction among students seemed to be so helpful, and this seemed like a classroom that would make students want to write.
I really liked the idea of “exploding” moments.  Having a “try-it” section of their notebooks was also a neat idea, that allowed the children to explore using different techniques.  Berta’s exploded moment was my favorite thing in this article.  Seeing the change from her original sentence to her exploded moment was amazing!  These children made so much progress in the 12 week period, and the ways these teachers got the students involved “physically, emotionally, and linguistically” really worked to turn the students into writers of memoir.

A Study of Memoir

The way Arnberg introduced memoir in her class, and allowed the students to discover it for themselves seemed to be very powerful.  The students were very interested in what they were doing, and this allowed them to come up with their own questions and guide the instruction.  It also helped that they were able to focus all of their attention on memoir, and were able to spend so much time with it.  Allowing the students to determine for themselves what memoir was and wasn’t provided a meaningful experience for them that stuck with them much better than being told a definition would have.
I liked how she allowed the students to choose their own mentor texts to complete their memoirs, and how much choice they were given in their writing.  Again, I was amazed at some of the things the students were able to write, and the questions they asked as they explored the genre!  I just don’t know how a teacher could devote so much time to one genre.

Memoir Picture Book

My favorite of these books was Family Pictures.  I loved the snapshot drawings and the memoirs to go along with each.  They each held a special memory for Carmen, and I just really love how the pictures really tell the stories in this book.  I also thought it was neat to read that Carmen painted all of these pictures, and made the paper cut-outs on each page.

Shortcut made me think about when I was younger and how I was afraid of the train tracks by my house.  All of the “brave” kids used to walk on them, and a lot of kids would cut across them on their way home from school.  I was always terrified of the train and didn’t want to get anywhere near it.  Sometimes my brother would go put pennies on before the trains came so they’d get flattened, I always wanted the pennies but I wouldn’t go near those tracks to put them there.   This story was completely different than my memories of the train, but its neat how it sparked a memory of my childhood.  I loved how he slowed down the passing of the train, and made it take up 10 pages in the book… trains really do take forever to go by.

I love how Patricia Polacco has all the pictures of her and her brother growing up on the inside covers, it made it real for me.  I could relate to this story, I hated my older brother growing up.  We didn’t get along about ANYTHING, but whenever I needed him he was always there.  Now that we live far away from each other we’re good friends, but as children forget it.  I’m sure I had a moment like this sometime when I was younger that changed my relationship with my brother…I just can’t think of what it might be.  I really enjoyed the pictures in this book too