Week One: The Multigenre Paper

Skeptical as I was at Jessie's assertion that she couldn't put Tom Romano's "Blending Genre, Altering Style" down, I actually found myself engrossed in the read myself. The book reminded me that there is more than one way to explore a topic in writing, and that those ways don't always need to be separated. As much as the standards we as teachers have to follow encourage us to teach expository writing one week and creative writing another, Romano's argument seems to be that a combination of genres can help our students to think deeply from different perspectives and angles.

Of course, we as teachers must always consider the purposes of our instruction and assignments before we begin. If our goal is truly to teach the genre of the traditional research paper (an important skill to master, especially for the college bound), then perhaps a multigenre paper is best reserved for another day. But if our goal is to have our students think deeply and completely about a topic, multigenre papers might be the perfect thing.

The seventh grade students I work with at Richfield Middle School recently had to complete an assignment called "Me in a Nutshell," which is a collection of essays/expository writing about themselves that the students set up like a brochure. I got to look at many finished products, and while I found the students used their creative talents to make the brochures "pretty," I feel a multiple genre approach to this assignment would produce much more interesting and varied writing. The idea of self-exploration and self-representation is something that requires a much more emotional approach than simply a collection of short essays. I could see myself altering this assignment to include more genres. I also am very interested in assigning a multigenre paper that asks students to represent their families. I started making a list of genres that would be suited to a family history paper (obituaries, recipes, dialogue, statistics, quotes, maps, etc.) and I've decided it's a writing project I'm really excited to try out in the classroom.

RESOURCE LINK OF THE WEEK: This Friday I spent the day in my cooperating teacher's classroom, and was SO EXCITED to find he shares my enthusiasm for making trivia and puzzles part of the classroom routine. This week he presented a "Super Question" to all of his classes (a puzzle involving a deck of cards) and asked students who could solve it to write their answer on a slip of paper and put it in a box. The teacher will draw a slip at the end of the week, and if the answer is correct they win a fabulous prize. He said he's always on the lookout for puzzles and trivia questions that would be difficult to Google, so I suggested he sign up for Ken Jennings' Tuesday Trivia, a weekly e-mail that has at least one un-Googlable question. If you'd like to use "Super Questions" in your class, go to www.ken-jennings.com and sign up for the weekly e-mail. If, like me, you'd just like to do a daily in-class question I would recommend you pick up "Ken Jennings' Trivia Almanac" or one of those "Brain Quest" decks.