Our objectives this week included unsubscribing from our mailing lists, performing peer reviews, and completing drafts of our preface, acknowledgments, and about the author.

The introductory sections (preface, acknowledgments, about the author) were relatively utilitarian in design. Instead of jumping right into our genres, these sections introduced why were researching this topic, how we researched it(with whose help), and who were are. I also began this week to construct my table of contents and connect my genres and other sections with links.

This was a time-consuming process because I hadn’t ever thought about what order I wanted my genres to be in. I tried to arrange them in such a way that I could transition them into one another. I think the transitions are a little forced and I want to work on them more. I tried to put my best pieces first and last. It’s something that I learned in high school English class: the reader will remember the first thing they read and the last thing they read. Somehow I doubt, you’re going to miss the stuff in the middle, but I always try to put my best pieces first and last because that makes the strongest impression.

When I was reading the transcripts for the moo, I realized that, while we do have some very detailed instructions, we didn’t get to see an example of an mrp. This could be a good thing because if we had an example we would want to use that as a template, instead of coming up with ideas on our own. It is nice that you are doing one at the same time. Since you obviously know what you are looking for in an mrp, we can look at yours, or just ask, if we have any questions.

I have written my drafts for the introductory paragraphs, but I still want to play around with the about the author section. I looked at yours and really like the idea of putting an autobiographical poem in this section. I really enjoyed writing the poem for the mrp. I’ve always liked to write poetry. I probably started when I was in grade school. My mom taught at the high school and I was there with her during the summer, helping her get her lab cleaned up (she taught chemistry and physics). The librarian was there at the same time and we ended up all helping each other. Afterwards, she let me check out this old poetry book that I found. Since then I’ve been hooked. It was a really fun exercise to write the poem from the perspective of a 12 year old boy, considering that I have never been a 12 year old boy. For the about the author section, I may also do an abbreviated webliography, since my webliography for the mrp was done from a child’s perspective.

I have been thinking a lot about how I want to tie my genres together. I had originally wanted to use the power point presentation, but I’m not sure that will work. I don’t think I can set it up to get back to a specific page in the presentation. So if I had a link on the second page of my presentation taking the reader to the newsletter, I think they would then have to go back to the beginning of the presentation, instead of being able to pick back up where they left off. The only thing that I could think of is something that I don’t know how to do. If I could set it up to open the link in a new window, it would work great. Since I don’t know how to do that, I think that I will compose an introduction to the mrp and try to transition from one genre to another. I had wanted to use the presentation so that when it refers to the parent’s reports of the child’s progress, I could link to the parent’s genres, and same thing with the peer reports.

Regardless of that, I feel so relieved to have the bulk of the writing done. It is a very nice feeling. No questions at this time. I look forward to the face to face.