before we start… i would like for you all to get together at a table with your mentor group....
TRANSCRIPT
Before we start…
•I would like for you all to get together at a table with your Mentor group.
•Please bring your writer’s notebooks with you!
Ashley GodwinSWP 2011 Summer Institute
Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Finding your voice through Epistolary Writing
Why Epistolary Writing?
In college:• Was where I was first
introduced to the genre of Epistolary Writing.
• I was reading works like Pamela by Samuel Richardson, Fanny Burney’s Evelina, and The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano.
• Equiano’s work was what inspired my senior seminar research.
In my Classroom: • I was beginning to notice that
students were struggling with developing voice in their writing.
• Voice was something that I felt I had a difficult time finding ways to teach.
• Through the novel The Skin I’m In by Sharon G. Flake I decided to incorporate letter writing for an upcoming project.
• I discovered AFTER the project was completed just how much voice my students developed through their diary entries!
My Hope for you…
•Is that after my workshop you will feel confident enough with this genre of writing to where you could go and use it within your own classroom. •Is that you will use this genre of writing as a strategy of improving your students voice in their writing. •Is that you will be able to collaborate with other grade level teachers to find ways to incorporate some form of epistolary writing into one of your current units of study. •Is that you will also be inspired by this genre and experiment with it in your own Writer’s Notebook!
What is Epistolary Writing?
• Epistolary Writing is a fancier way of saying Letter Writing!
• Think back to how people were communicating with one another before the written word, before cell phones, and before the World Wide Web.
• I’ll give you a hint…(Starts with Lett and ends with ers!)
• So, this is not a new genre of writing and it most certainly is not a new genre of writing to your students.
Maybe Seems A Little Foreign?
Not surprising!• In an anthology of letter Stories
titled Other’s People Mail Gail Pool refers to epistolary writing as “both an art and pastime” that “has steadily declined over the past hundred years.”
You can believe me or not
But, I’d be willing to put money on the fact that your students use this
genre of writing at least five times a day!
21st Century Letter Writing
• Donna Reiss, a professor of English in Virginia Beach states, “With increasing access to electronic mail and the Internet, letter writing or message posting is extending ways undreamed of by most academics decades ago; the very medium is revitalizing the epistolary art in ways that most students respond to favorably.”
21st Century Letter Writing
• Blogs • Emails• Text Messages• Instant Messages• Faxes• Facebook Messages
–Many of which are accessible to our students!
Why use it in your classroom?
Why Not?First and foremost if our
students are responding to this genre favorably and we know that they are already using different forms of this genre then…why not bring it into our classrooms?!
It Gives them a Voice • If you are like me
and you are wondering how to help your students increase their use of voice techniques in their writing then this genre may be what you need!
• You also may find through the course of this workshop that there are other tools that you can bring in with this genre that are correlated in your grade level standards.
Can’t Find that Happy Medium?
• What I have seen within my own classroom is that my students are doing 1 of 2 things:– 1)They are either trying to be someone they are
not and sound like someone they are not because they are so programmed to believe that they have to sound a certain way to make the grade.
– 2) Or, they are writing in a way to where the reader can’t seem to understand what they’re trying to say or their train of thought. I think this comes a lot from not knowing a good balance between formal and informal language.
In The No-Nonsense Guide to Teaching Writing• Judy Davis and Sharon Hill state,
“Voice is established when the draft begins and the writer is paying attention to purpose, genre, and audience. By the time the revision stage comes, the voice of the piece has already been established and the writer can pay attention to fine-tuning the voice of the piece.
In The No-Nonsense Guide to Teaching Writing
• In their book, Davis and Hill establish early what they believe to be “Good Qualities of Writing.”
• One of the qualities stated is that the piece must have voice!
• They go on to pose a couple of questions for us to think about as teachers of writing when evaluating our students’ work for voice:– 1) Has the writer given the reader a sense of
a person behind the piece?– 2) Do we understand how the piece should be
read and understood?
In his book Write to Learn…• Donald Murray describes voice as “the person
in the text; …what persuades the reader to listen and draws the reader on.” Voice, Murray says, is the music of the piece and functions in the same way that the background music of a movie informs us of the meaning of what we are seeing. Writers sometimes show their early understandings of voice by writing, “In this piece, I am going to tell you…” or by putting in their commentary. Voice grows with the writer and students must be taught to listen for it, to write with their voice and to let their voice in the piece be driven by the purposes they bring to their piece.”
Time to Collaborate• Spend the next eight to ten minutes
discussing in your mentor groups ways in which you could incorporate Letter writing into the coming school year.
• Remember this is a great genre to use in other contents, so think outside of the ELA Box!
• Do you currently have a unit already built that this would fit wonderfully in?
Our Seed Ideas Inside an ELA Classroom
• A study of the Odyssey– letters from Odysseus back to Penelope, etc. (letters between characters in literature)
• Intro to American Lit survey course– letters from historical figures in different eras of history
• Craft study of the mentor texts– using less traditional techniques to establish VOICE (phonetic spelling, slang, etc)
Other Content Classrooms
• Letter writing “Consult an expert”: send a letter to an expert in the content area (topical connection, linking history to today)
• Postcards from…: Using postcards from Newton or using a letter from Newton to teach the lesson
• Therapeutic letter writing after a loss (guidance/counseling application)
• Pen pals (balloons, emails)• Letter writing with your students
after the semester is over / Advice for next year’s class
Books that Inspire Letters
Elementary Grades: • Letters from Felix
by Annette Langen• Amelia’s Notebook
by Marissa Moss• Dear Mr. Blueberry
by Simon James• Postcards From
Pluto by Loreen Leedy
• The Jolly Postman by Allan Ahlberg
Middle/Secondary Grades:
• Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary
• Nothing But The Truth by Avi
• Middle School is Worse Than Meatloaf by Jennifer Holm
• Beastly by Alex Flinn• The Skin I’m In By
Sharon G. Flake• The Diary of Anne
Frank By Anne Frank• No More Dead Dogs By
Gordon Korman
Because we are a Learning Community…
• I want to ask that if you find a creative way to use a form of epistolary writing in your classroom this coming school year and find that it was a success PLEASE email me at [email protected] to let me know about your success stories!
From Samara O’Shea’s For the Love of Letters• “ How then do we keep her (the English Language)
alive and healthy? We go back to the beginning. Before BlackBerries, text messages, instant messages, cell phones, fax machines, computers, typewriters, telephones, and telegraphs. We go back to a time when there were two things: language and paper. For writers, that combination equaled novels and articles. For the lovelorn, it equaled poetry. For mathematicians and scientists, it was a place to work out equations and take copious notes. For monks, it was a place to copy scripture. But for all these types, as well as the man on the street and the woman by the window, the person who just had a message to send, language plus paper equaled letters. And the letters eventually equaled evidence. Evidence that they existed. That they breathe. That they had good insights and bad days. That they loved. That they suffered. That they longed. That they had moments of certifiable insanity. That they were selfish. And that, sometimes, they were satisfied. We must make arrangements for our descendants to discover us in such a candid way.”