Childhood obesity is taking the United States by storm. The once most obese country in the world has gone done from that rank, but it would be best if there did not have to be a rank at all. Genre’s define a piece a writing, but certain conventions can change the entire genre of a single paper. In the article, ”Childhood Obesity Reduction By School Based Programs” (COR) the author—Sheila P. Davis—describes cultural differences and ways schools can better children’s health. The transformation of one genre to another genre is difficult, but definitely manageable. Thus, the conventions and moves a writer uses can change an entire piece of writing genre into something simpler or more complex.
Furthermore, the genre for the younger audience would probably be a fitness journal given to the students by their physical education teacher. The conventions that support this idea are the use of a school as a basis of the study as well as implementing regulations to ensure children’s fitness. “Heart-Smart curriculum” identifies the idea that the school is suggesting students get on this program. A couple of the skills that this process helps is nutrition, exercise, and coping skills. These are all skills that a child tends to learn in middle school and elementary school. Also, COR entails fitness measurements which weighs and measures the health of a child. The younger audience most likely does not understand the difficult complex words. However, they do understand the intentions of the author which are to eat healthy and exercise frequently. Overall, the child’s version of the article is not entirely dense because the article is jam packed with information regarding the trials as well as statistics on the researcher’s findings.
Moreover, the genre for a more mature audience, would most likely be a public service announcement made by the government. The components that are evident from the COR article are, the policies that the health department might enact in order to better the lives of children. When they mention the policies that the school should follow—such as measuring the weight and height of children—this transpires the idea that children will be measured for their fitness. Also the school is required to serve healthier food to the children. Mainly the programs for the school to fool are broken up into six categories: policy, curriculum, instruction, program coordination, staff training, family and community involvement, and evaluation. The move that the authors made here are that the authors were trying to set up a system that can be followed and be mentioned in a public service announcement that relates to bettering the obesity in children. Following that, the authors mentioned “Cardiovascular Assessments”, in order to properly exam the healthiness of children. The mention of many health tips and specific methods to undergo with children, explains why this article can be viewed as a public service announcement on bettering the lives of children.
To sum it up, genre tend to be extremely specific due to conventions, but as you break them up into parts, the various genres within the piece start to branch out as they did in the COR piece.
Works Cited
Davis, Sheila P., et al. "Childhood Obesity Reduction By School Based Programs." ABNF Journal 13.6 (2002): 145. Academic Search Complete. Web. 11 May 2015.
I like your topic because obesity is a very prevalent problem in our country and I don’t think many people realize this. Your point that conventions can change the entire genre of a text is true. I think the genre you chose for the younger audience is interesting and definitely specific. Your conventions are also very detailed, and I like that you mentioned your audience’s education/understanding level. I also think your second choice is good and pretty original. Maybe you could have gone a little more into detail here about how you would transform the article into this genre, however I like that you broke down the main components of it. You could probably go into detail about what the format and structure of the announcement would be or how you would organize the information into this new genre. Overall I think your choices are great though and this could definitely work .
ReplyDeleteI love both choices for the transformations! I think that the mature audience would be perfect for obesity. You could also direct it to how they can help their children or others they know. You can have the beginning in big font to catch attention of your audience and get inspiration from actual public service announcements. The same thing can go for the journal. Look up actual journals online and try and replicate one geared to your topic. It would be cool if you could make a blank copy and turn that in. The journal for the kids could have pictures of vegetables and food tables so that it adds some color and creativity for children. I think that these are really creative ideas and you can really draw from the different conventions.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, great topic that is interesting and important. I also thought a fitness journal was really creative and a great way to use it in order to inform a younger audience. I also like that you added that the fitness journal wont be too dense or information packed because it wouldn’t capture a younger persons attention if it were. For the older audience, a public service announcement is also a very good, creative idea. I think for the older audience, the content should be more factual and informing without packing it with too much information even an adult wouldn’t want to sit through and read. Overall, great creativity and outline of what you are going to write.
ReplyDeleteI think it might be easier for the reader to read your blog when there is indentations between paragraphs for your blog posts! However, I think your idea of childhood obesity is a great one! This is definitely a big issue in the US. I like the idea of the fitness journal because I think a lot of people (especially where I grew up) are very into fitness and working out. I think it would be cool if you made this into a journal activity for kids. For example, in the beginning give your information about why health is important and then starting on the next page have a log of healthy foods (maybe including a healthy snack recipe) and an easy work out log (with an example of an easy work out activity). I think you need to be more specific with the mature audiences article cause right now I think its still a work in progress! Great start! :)
ReplyDeleteInteresting topic and very relevant to contemporary society!
ReplyDelete“Genre’s define a piece a writing, but certain conventions can change the entire genre of a single paper. In the article” Good point! It would be nice to maybe expand on this more.
I agree that a fitness journal is very suitable for a younger audience and that a public service announcement is more suitable for an older audience.
Its great that you pointed out where you would need to take a different approach to appeal to these two different audiences.
A tip that I would have is maybe being more specific with the public service announcement? How old is the older audience? Does a public service announcement apply to a 19 year old or would an 19 year old fall into the younger audience category?
Also indentations would be helpful for formatting your article!
I really like the idea about the fitness journal because it’s very different than what everyone else is doing. It seems as if it is a very good fit to the topic you are discussing. It’s important to study the conventions of a fitness journal and make sure that you are able to translate the academic piece. I also like how you chose to discuss childhood obesity, a major modern problem that really needs to be addressed by the people. That’s why it adds even more importance for you to be able to translate the information towards a younger audience because they are the people that could make the most change about the issue.
ReplyDeleteYour idea is very relevant to both a younger and older audience. Obesity is a large topic in the country and people are actually trying to convince younger children to be healthy in PE and the government is also attempting to educate adults about childhood obesity and how to prevent it in their children. Whats interesting is that they are both kind of like public announcements except they have a different "writer" and audience with a similar purpose. I think that your public service announcement should be directed more for a specific target demographic. Maybe direct it as a government public service announcement aimed at parents of children it could be more specific and be directed at an older audience.
ReplyDeleteI think that you have a lot of great ideas for the writing project, especially for the self-assessment part. The issue is also an important one and it's something that everyday people can understand and relate to. I thought that the fitness journal was a good genre to use for kids, and that the public service announcement was a unique and really good idea for adults. Both of these genres are nice because they allow you to pack a lot of information into the article since they're both writing based. Though, the only concern I have is that the genres tend to be boring sometimes, so I would add some visuals make it more light-hearted to avoid that.
ReplyDelete