Literacy Narrative Reflective Blog Post

When Lacy first gave us the assignment to write a Literacy Narrative that was telling a story it took me all of 5 seconds to decide that I wanted to talk about my week at Blue Ridge Leaders School in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

The intial writing of the Literacy Narrative was when it became a little more difficult for me to talk about Blue Ridge. I had many ideas of what I wanted to do with the paper. Whether it be writing it from my brothers perspective of when I came home or talking about it as a metaphor of a ship but nothing really connected to how Blue Ridge affected my Literacy. I could talk about how it changed me as a person and how it affected my attitudes toward life and other people but I still couldn't make the connection with how this  had anything to do with my literacy. So when it came time to write my first draft I just ignored the concept of Literacy and just wrote down all the things I wanted to say about Blue Ridge and my experience. The one major editing technique that I used was going through the intro to the story and making sure that it grabbed the readers attention. https://docs.google.com/document/d/16XXUVGOj8cUWij0XytDqNW82-8IFezDJx7cbDtWUaro/edit










After going through my original draft and reading all the comments that my group members left as well as doing the revision strategy of re-reading my intro to make sure it grabbed people I realized that I had a lot of work to do on this paper if I wanted to get a good grade. Nowhere in the paper was how the trip had affected my Literacy so I knew I needed to start there in order to make this paper better. So for starters I completely added a whole new beginning paragraph which focused more on the concept of literacy and what it meant to me, which I think really gave the reader a new perspective on literacy. So that was one way that the revision strategies helped me. Then during one class period Lacy had us write a couple editing goals our paper and the final draft. My editing goals were to come up with something for the conclusion and to watch out for incomplete thoughts. After I went through my paper again looking for these things I completed a conclusion that I think is good and tried to tie up thoughts that I thought might be somewhat incomplete.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1By4jxyff-vA3NdkVNDzVha7gJ3bQmD0KU7-K0pHGOtk/edit


I think when I look back at the whole process it is really interesting to see how when I started there was so much missing from the paper to when I finished and I think that this paper completely conveys everything that I was trying to say. It was really hard to figure out how to incorporate the change in my literacy through this experience but with the help of the editing tools that we did in class, the comments my writing group left, and the comments that Lacy gave me everthing just fell into place. I wrote my Literacy Narrative about Blue Ridge because it is definitely one of those times in life that puts things into perspective for you, it really makes you realize what is important in life, and I just wanted to share my experience with everyone.

So heres my final draft if anyone wants to read it.......
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XLouN2wR8tU78PDrpGbNvO67WX2LNg-R14oA3WY9x0c/edit