I really liked the Multigenre Autobiography and I would like to use that in my classroom. I think it would really get the students thinking about different texts. I know when I used to think about text I didn't think about shows, movies, or music. I think it can really open students minds. I think this could lead into a good unit on poetry too because it is a text that most students are not very familiar with. I would like students to bring in the lyrics to their favorite songs for us to analyze as a class too along with classic poetry.
The Cleveland International Film Festival was a fantastic experience and I plan on going every year from now on. I know students in my classroom might not be able to go to a film festival to experience different types of movies. But they might be able to watch one of their parents favorite movies or rent a movie from the library. I would like my students to watch a movie that they wouldn't normaly watch and write a film review for it. Writing a film review will make them think about the movie more like a text.
I enjoyed alot of the readings from this class. My favorite as the Costanzo text. I never thought about teaching films by themselves in my classroom until I read this book. I always thought I would only be able to use a film if it was a movie based on the books we were reading or something. I'm really excited about teaching film as text.
The articles we read in this class were very interesting too. I don't think I would have students write cell phone novels but I would like them to blog if at all possible. If students don't have access to computers they can always "blog" the old fashioned way with a journal. I might even have students write short "posts" and we can post them on the bulletin board in the classroom so other students still have a chance to read others "blogs".
The graphic novels we read in this class were very interesting. I don't think I would choose these particular graphic novels to teach in my classroom but they were interesting. I think graphic novels would be very good for struggling or reluctant readers. I want all of my students to enjoy reading. This would be a good start for those students who don't enjoy reading yet.
I would use some of the ice breakers we did in this class. I liked the count to 20 because it brought us together as a class. We wanted to get to 20. I also liked the different ways we were broken up into groups. I would use those ideas because then students can have fun while getting into their groups.
All in all I think this was a very informative class. There were alot of interesting ideas. But there was also alot of stuff due the last month of class which made it very overwhelming. I wish things were a little more spread out.
