Process Memo

Michele Mount

Lauren Rinke

Writing 150

October 12, 2012

Process Memo

            The animoto process began with the literacy timeline. When I first started to think about what I should write about, nothing came to my mind. Then I began to think more and more of how my literacy has changed throughout my life. I began to think back to when I was little and remembered how I had a hard time reading. Then I began to think about what changed me from someone having a hard time reading to someone who loves reading. The only thing that could explain this was reading the Harry Potter books with my big brother. When I began to write my timeline, I decided to start from when I first started to read and tried to link how literacy has changed me throughout the years. It was easy for me to know what to write about once I began to remember my difficulties learning to read. Once I started to write, it was hard to put everything I was thinking into an essay format and make it the length requirement. Something that I didn’t think about until I began to write was how much of impact literacy has had on my life and how literacy has changed me into a better student. A major theme that I had throughout my essay was how literacy has impacted my life and how the Harry Potter books have advanced my literacy. I also focused on how I used to have a hard time reading and how the Harry Potter books helped me with my reading skills and contributed to my love of reading. Once I figured my theme it was easy for me to intertwine the Harry Potter books into my theme. I do not think that it was difficult for me to stay to my theme; the only thing that was a problem was having enough information without sounding redundant. By writing a timeline, it helped organize my thoughts to put in my paper. It was also helpful to see from one grade to another grade how my literacy has advanced.

            When I began to write my literacy narrative it was easy for me to keep to my theme and I didn’t jump all over the place. I tried to focus on the main things that helped contribute to my literacy. I stayed to two main contributions: My brother and the Harry Potter books. I organized my paper by the different stages of literacy in my life. I organized my essay by chronological order. It was easy for me to keep everything chronological and in separate paragraphs. The only thing that I had a problem was not trying to sound redundant. It really helped me with organization by doing the timeline. Before I started to write, I wrote down what I wanted to focus on in each paragraph and tried to keep each section separate from each other, so I didn’t mingle ideas in numerous paragraphs. 

After my peer review session, I began to take out information that seemed to be redundant. It was very helpful having this session because it let me know if my thoughts made sense to other people. I took out redundant phrases or rephrased sentences to make them less repetitive. The constructive criticism suggestions were keeping away from repeats and also grammar. The constructive criticism was helpful because it allowed me to see my essay from someonelse’s point of view. I was already thinking about how I wanted my slide show to look but I wasn’t sure how it would flow with the character requirement and I didn’t know what pictures I could use. Making a video made me express my essay in a new way and it also gave me the opportunity to make my essay a visual presentation of my thoughts.

When I had my peer review session, my partners picked 15 sentences that helped contribute to my theme in my essay. I probably used 10 of the 15 sentences that my partners suggested in my final slide show. I also contributed a couple of my own sentences that seemed important to me. I also reworded some sentences that my partners picked out so that it would fit on my slide. I believe that the sentences I chose were important to the main theme of the story. I found it difficult to write to the character limit. It was difficult to make the sentence you wanted to express make sense in a different way by saying it in different wording. I used pictures to space out the text from other texts that didn’t go with each other. I wish I had more pictures of myself reading rather then having so many pictures from the Internet. Most of the pictures were complementary to the texts; which allowed the viewer to get a visual of what I was saying. I choose the images of me reading because they featured me reading and they also helped describe the slides. I believe that I used probably half of the picture requirement from the web and the other half from my own pictures. I choose the song “Somewhere only We Know” which allowed me to express what I think about when I read. I got inspired to use this song from the usage of this song in the Winnie the Pooh Movie trailer. This song helps tell my literacy because it shows the viewer what I think about reading. Reading allows us to explore different worlds and be anyone in these worlds. By looking at the comments made in response to my video, if I had to do it again I would try to find more of my own pictures to help express my story and I would also state how my literacy changed by stating what grades I was in.  Overall, I really enjoyed the animoto project and I really would like to do this again in the future. Maybe I will use this project in the future for my English students.