After students have sufficient ideas and content and they are ready to choose the topic(s), types, and genres for a memoir to take to the publishing stage, they draft and revise based on daily revision mini-lessons on the traits—organization, word choice, voice, sentence fluency, and finally edit based on convention lessons taught in class.
Janel combines our lessons together in her final memoir (Roessing, 2014, p. 77-78).
Where I Am From by Janel Moore (based on G.E. Lyon’s poem “Where I’m From”)
I am from bar-b-que,
From corn-on-the-cob and mac-and-cheese.
I am from mowed grass and tall trees.
I am from the never-finished playground
That has no swing or benches
As if time stood still before my eyes.
I am from teachers and scientists,
From Mandela and Martin Luther King.
I’m from “Don’t do drugs”
And “Stay in school.”
From Respect and Be tactful.
I’m from “Thank you, Jesus”
From children’s church
And the gospel songs
I’ve heard many time before.
I’m from word games and puzzles,
Road trips and airplane rides.
But also from drive-by shootings
And trying to stay alive.
In my room are boxes
Toppling over with old pictures -
A time when I lived
With no cares at all,
A time that I will never forget
And never want to erase.
These memoirs almost write themselves. If teachers help adolescents to think back, remember, and reflect on their pasts through reading the memoirs of others and sharing their childhood stories within the classroom writing community, after analyzing texts and brainstorming, stories pour out. Students have written about persons, places, mementoes, events, crises, and discovered photographs. Writers have published their memoirs as rhyming poems, free-verse poetry, limericks, sonnets, prose narratives, plays, and graphics. They have shared unbelievably personal stories, such as “The Day Daddy Left,” and humorous stories, such as “Beastie.”
But most importantly, adolescent writers have perceived themselves as authors as they wrote with voice, cared about their writing, and discovered meaning in their lives as they learned about themselves, writing what matters.
References
Bell, C. (2014). El Deafo. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
Lyon, G.E. (1999) Where I’m from. Where I’m from: Where poems come from. Spring, TX: Absey & Company.
Moore, J. (2014). Where I am from. As in Roessing, L. Bridging the gap: Reading critically and writing meaningfully to get to the core. Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers.
Parton, D (1996). Coat of Many Colors. New York: HarperCollins.
Roessing, L. (2014). Bridging the gap: Reading critically and writing meaningfully to get to the core. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Rylant, C. (2001). Waiting to waltz. New York, NY: Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books.
Satrapi, Marjane. (2004). Persepolis: The story of a childhood. New York, NY: Pantheon.
Seinfeld, J. (2008). Halloween. New York, NY: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
Lesley Roessing taught middle school language arts and humanities for over twenty years. She currently serves as Director of the Coastal Savannah Writing Project and Senior Lecturer in the College of Education of Armstrong University in Savannah, Georgia, United States. She will be presenting at ELMLE Vienna 2017 in January.
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