Process Memo

Literacy Narrative: Reflection

Literacy Timeline:

-The most logical place for me to begin in my literacy timeline was at my earliest memory of learning how to read which were when I was 4 or 5 years old. For me, I didn't have a difficult time remembering the important details because it was those details that made the memory in the first place. It wasn't that hard to get my thoughts on paper since it was just a regurgitation of information.

-Something interesting I discovered when writing out the timeline was that I never realized that my mom was so against me reading. I’d be reading a book on my bed and she would say, “Stop reading and do your homework.”  Usually parents would yell at their kids to stop playing video games or to wake up because they've slept for too long; I never thought that a parent would scold their kid for reading too much. 

-I noticed that my theme was mostly books. As much as I love movies, music, and art, I always found myself reading.

-I focused my paper on my reading experience at my aunt’s house because as I was writing the timeline, I realized that I had spent a lot of time writing out the details of that one memory.  It wasn't difficult to choose since I had so much detail on that one specific memory.

-I realized how much I miss reading. After thinking back and noticing how much time I've spent reading, I really wish I could go back and treasure those moments even more. And I realized that I write very direct and to the point so I don't always hit the word count.

Literacy Narrative:

-I was able to focus on one area for my written narrative because I noticed that I was able to write a lot about that certain experience compared to the rest of the events that I wrote on the timeline. I guess you could say that it sort of jumped out at me. I had started writing and soon noticed that I had a descriptive paragraph so I stopped and thought, “Hey, I could use this for my narrative.” And that’s exactly what I did. A challenge I faced was trying not to swallow up the reader with too much imagery. I wanted to get my point across but I also wanted the reader to relate to my experience as well.

- When I began to write my narrative, I was able to organize how I wanted it to be structured but it was hard for me to word it in a way that others could understand. I'm actually quite scatterbrained because there were so many things I wanted to include that I didn't know where in the memory I should start and how I should word it. In the end, I chose to write it chronologically. I’m not a skilled enough writer so include interesting flashbacks without drawing the reader away from the main point of the narrative.  In the end, I just wrote it out. There was no prewriting strategy; I just wrote out the memory from beginning to end as much as I could.

- After composing my rough draft and the peer review, I changed some of the wording and added some parts that could have had a bit more detail. Unfortunately, I think that the peer review would have been more helpful if we had more time to fully read and give feedback. I felt as though the peer review session was a bit rushed because we didn't have enough class time, which isn't something anyone can fix. Other than that, I'd have to say that with the time my partner had, she did a good job as “another set of eyes”. She pointed out my grammar mistakes and circled areas that needed to be more in-depth.

- When I made the final edits to my narrative, I was already thinking about the different parts I'd like to include in my slideshow. It didn't quite alter what I had wanted to write. In fact, all I did was change the wording from my narrative in a way so that it fit perfectly in the video slideshow.

Animoto Slideshow:

-With the time available to us, my peer review partner highlighted around 10-13 sentences but didn't get the chance to tell me why they stuck out to her as interesting or important. I think I used a majority if not all of her suggested sentences in my Animoto slideshow.

-I actually didn't find it that difficult to fit the words into the 52-word limit slideshow. Some were a bit more difficult than others but I would just extend them to the other slides and not add a picture in between them.

-I used images off of Google to help express what I was trying to say. I would have used more of my own pictures but I don’t have very many pictures of myself so that couldn't have worked.  One thing I tried to focus for the pictures was to find pictures that had the right mood and tone to compliment my slideshow, an example being the ripped book. The fact that the single piece of the book was the focus was very much like how my mind was thinking at the time when my mom took my books away and even ripped one in half. The empty background was like the empty feeling it gave me.

-The title of the song is called ‘Merry-Go-Round of Life’. I thought it was suited for my Animoto slideshow because it was a narrative about my life of reading thus far. I didn't mean for it to happen, but something cool that I noticed about the piece was that at the times where my reading experience didn't turn out so happy, the tune changed from major to minor which we call “text painting”.  It added a bit of flavor to the mood and was easier for the watcher/reader to follow the meaning of the slideshow.

-All in all, I wish I could have used some pictures of me besides the very first one. They were still helpful when it came to the direction of the narrative but using my own pictures would have made it more personal, in my opinion.