Writing Projects

Narrative 2.0

This project starts with students writing a short narrative which can either be about a personal experience, a memory they are fond of, or an anecdote that they love to tell family or friends. However, because this narrative is only part of a bigger project which will explore the impact of genre, audience, and media to writing, remind your students that they write something that they feel comfortable discussing and sharing to others. Next, students will adapt their narrative to a new medium or a different form of media.

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Your students should be able to choose a medium and genre appropriate to the kind of story that they are telling, but in any case, be prepared to discuss with them their choices. You can also also encourage them to build on their existing knowledge of and familiarity with digital platforms, so they can focus on social media applications that they use. You do not have to be familiar with their medium and genre, but your students should be able to explain their choices to you including their intended audience. After they're finished with their adaptation, they will write a reflection focusing on what changes they made when adapting the narrative, what choices they had to do to make the new narrative appealing, and how the choices they've made fit your audience. In our FYC curriculum at NIU, reflection is 50% of the students' grade in every writing project.

Requirements

• Completion Draft
• Remediated Narrative

All drafts of the new narrative should include roughly the equivalent content to 800 words of text, but not all of the communication will be in words, however. It’s likely that your students' narrative will include images, video, sounds, symbols, or other media. All projects must include at least one mode other than written text.

• Reflection Piece

Reflection must be at least 800 words, and they can also be multimodal and include things like video, images, symbols, or sound. A Narrative 2.0 reflection should clearly talk about the choices that your students made while remediating their story. Since this is the first of the four reflection pieces that your students will write, you may provide them with guide questions first to help them focus their reflection on how they made their remediated narrative appealing, the changes they made when adapting their narrative, and how their choices fit their audience.