"Genre Expert" Workshop Presentation

Over the past few weeks, I have been working on my genre expert workshop presentation. The genre I was assigned was narrative reading and writing. Initially, when I was thinking about this project, I really wanted to do my presentation on letter writing. I love writing letters and receiving letters from others. My boyfriend and I write letters to each other very frequently. Even though we see each other several times a week, we still enjoy writing letters to one another because it helps us reflect on our relationship and work on our writing skills. When I was assigned to do my project on narrative writing and reading, I had to stop and think about what experiences I have had with narrative reading and writing. There are only a few experiences from my experience during undergrad that I can recall involving students and narrative writing. The first experience was in a second-grade classroom, the kids were writing personal narratives like crazy. They were not really taking time to go through the writing process. I also did not notice that the teacher was teaching the different structural elements that I learned about while reading the chapter about narrative writing in Tompkins (2019).  When students are explicitly taught about the structural elements of narrative writing they will develop into better writers.

Tompkins (2019) discusses the five story structures that a writer uses are plot, setting, characters, theme, and point of view. For my presentation, I initially was not sure how I should approach the genre presentation. There was so much that I read and learned about this genre, I wasn’t sure what to focus on. When I reread the chapter on narrative writing, Tompkins (2019) said, “Often character is the most important element because the experience the author creates for readers is centered on a character or group of characters.” (p. 176) I decided to focus on character development for my genre expert workshop presentation. I had so many ideas running through my head when I made this decision. I began my research looking through the Reading Teacher journals and found several supporting articles, which support my thinking, and validates what Tompkins (2019) discusses in the chapter on narrative writing.

I am very proud of the work I have put into my presentation for Monday. I thought through each of the slides I created making sure that I will only use the slides as a tool and not to read directly off of. Knowing myself, I needed to include a few amounts of details into the presentation or else I would sit a read directly off of the board. I also took a lot of time to find an excellent read-aloud book to use for part of my presentation. I also found a lot of additional picture books that have strong characters that will aid in my presentation when it is time for independent practice. I really hope that my presentation goes over well. I get extremely nervous presenting in front of people. Even though I am friends with all of the people in our class, and I know they will not judge me for my work. They are always so encouraging and supportive of me. However, I still get very anxious about presenting in front of people. I am excited to see how the presentation goes over on Monday!

References

Tompkins, G.E., & Jones, P. D. (2019). Teaching writing: Balancing process and product (7th ed.). NY, NY: Pearson.