The Power of Memoir: Unleashing Students’ Experiences
Keywords
memoir writing, mentor texts, writing strategies
Abstract
It was my second year teaching, and I thought writing a memoir in our eighth-grade class might help us learn more about each other and provide a good way to begin our use of writing strategies, including mentor texts.
We read short memoirs to see how they focused on an event, and we took some time to consider options for our memoirs: what events in our lives might be fruitful for writing in this genre? As we drafted, we returned to the mentor texts to study craft—how dialogue at a key moment could focus reader attention, how effective description could set a tone, how to craft a moment of reflection without moralizing.
Original Publication Citation
“The Power of Memoir: Unleashing Students’ Experiences.” NCTE Blog (November 20, 2019). http://www2.ncte.org/blog/2019/11/the-power-of-memoir/
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Dean, Deborah, "The Power of Memoir: Unleashing Students’ Experiences" (2019). Faculty Publications. 9622.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/facpub/9622
Document Type
Other
Publication Date
2019
Publisher
NCTE Blog
Language
English
College
Humanities
Department
English
Copyright Use Information
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