1. First, I read the book, going into the experience with the perspective of a teacher looking to find a quality mentor text. 

2. As I read I used sticky notes to jot down writers’ workshop ideas as they appeared to me.

3. After I was finished with the book I went back to my sticky notes and picked my three favorite ideas to use for this Multi-Genre Project.

4. My first idea was to write a poem about the Monkey King’s story. So, a google search later and I found out that this was a variation of the “journey to the west”. A spiritual fable of Chinese origin that is an “allegorical rendition of the journey mingling with Chinese fables, fairy tales, legends, superstitions, popular beliefs, monster stories, and whatever else Taoist, Buddhist, and Chinese popular religions.” (Haiwang 2004) It touched on many different Popular Asian religions, but even more so on morals, selfishness, and envy. In the end I think it was trying to show us that the only way to truly be happy is to be true to yourself and stop trying to be what people what you to be. And most of all except yourself for wo you are, and grateful for it. These concepts inspired the above acrostic poem, about the “Monkey King”. 

5. The second sticky note idea that made the cut for this project was the Journal Entry about a time that you had to make the decision to stay true to yourself, and or your goals. For this I wrote about a time shortly into my college career. 

6. The last idea that I used for this project was “A Thank You Letter To A Friend” This was inspired by a scene in the book American Born Chinese, when Wei-Chen and Amelia are locked in a closet having a conversation. During this conversation, Wei-Chen explains that Jin is very important to him and that he was a good, kind person that made him feel accepted when he first moved to their country and school. This inspired a prompt for a writing workshop that asks students to think of a time when someone made them feel this way and write them a thank you letter to a friend.

-  This Project helped me identify strategies in Idea Generation, Editing, and Publishing.  Personally, I found the sticky note method helpful that I discussed in the “My Process” section of this presentation. I wrote all of my pieces with writers’ workshop ideas as the intention and included how I would incorporate them under the writing itself. 

 

Review of the Technology Tool:

-  The technology tool that I choose to use for the presentation was Padlet. Padlet is an online publishing tool that allows you to create both community interactive, and editable blogs or post boards, and concreate website publications alike. I have used this tool before many times in the past and highly recommend it for many reasons. First of all, it is free (there is a paid version), anyone can make up to six Padlets at a time, however if you run out you can just delete an old one. It is very user friendly and easy to edit make changes, and even upload media. Plus, my favorite editing assistant Grammerly, works within the mobile app (yes you can even work on your Padlet from your phone) and website.