Just as students need to read like a writer using traditional printed text, this article describe... more Just as students need to read like a writer using traditional printed text, this article describes a framework for students to read like digital writers. A s digital writing continues to evolve in schools, so too should notions of how to support adolescents as digital writers. In this article, we describe how teachers can support adolescents' digital writing by examining digital mentor texts in the genre of memoir. Digital mentor texts can afford opportunities for students to examine the role of multimodal elements such as narration, sound effects, images, and structure (e.g., se-quencing, transitions) to guide their own compositional choices for digital memoir writing. We focus on Gabriella (third author), a current seventh-grade English language arts teacher and former preservice teacher who participated in our study of preservice teachers' multimodal composition processes of digital memoirs (Werderich & Manderino, 2014). An analysis of Gabriella's digital memoir elucidated the crafting techniques and writing processes that accomplished writers use as they negotiate the multiple representations of modes to communicate a message. By providing digital mentor texts for students to read like digital writers, a more comprehensive and perhaps deeper understanding of digital writing and the memoir genre can emerge. We conclude by proposing a framework for examining digital mentor texts to support narrative writing in digital formats.
Just as students need to read like a writer using traditional printed text, this article describe... more Just as students need to read like a writer using traditional printed text, this article describes a framework for students to read like digital writers. A s digital writing continues to evolve in schools, so too should notions of how to support adolescents as digital writers. In this article, we describe how teachers can support adolescents' digital writing by examining digital mentor texts in the genre of memoir. Digital mentor texts can afford opportunities for students to examine the role of multimodal elements such as narration, sound effects, images, and structure (e.g., se-quencing, transitions) to guide their own compositional choices for digital memoir writing. We focus on Gabriella (third author), a current seventh-grade English language arts teacher and former preservice teacher who participated in our study of preservice teachers' multimodal composition processes of digital memoirs (Werderich & Manderino, 2014). An analysis of Gabriella's digital memoir elucidated the crafting techniques and writing processes that accomplished writers use as they negotiate the multiple representations of modes to communicate a message. By providing digital mentor texts for students to read like digital writers, a more comprehensive and perhaps deeper understanding of digital writing and the memoir genre can emerge. We conclude by proposing a framework for examining digital mentor texts to support narrative writing in digital formats.
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