Those Who Can, Do: Multi-Genre Research

Teaching Wonders

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Those Who Can, Do: Multi-Genre
Presented by Camille Allen and Melinda Brown Putz
(both trained by Tom Romano…author of Blending Genres, Altering Styles: Writing Multi-Genre Papers)

Camille talked about how her pre-service teachers mentor a group of fifth graders through the multi-genre process and complete the work themselves. Students are working in groups for the collaborative benefit.

For the research projects: students decide on topics (student choice), then the teacher begins by teaching a different genre to the students each week or so (could be more often if students were older). There is a list of possible genres in Camille’s handouts (similar to Nancie Atwell’s Writing Territories) Click here for a list of possible territories.

The actual writing utilizes students various skills and talents.

The end project incorporates reading, writing, speaking, listening as students will be presenting their finished projects to their classmates.

This assignment is *very* easy to differentiate. Every one works at their own level, every one has something that they *can* do. Differing levels of students have different requirements for the number of genres that they must include.

Camille’s project is done over a semester—but it’s working on it one day per week for an hour with homework assignments in between.

Melinda’s project is with high school juniors. Theirs is a five week project—two weeks to research, two weeks to write, and then another week where there is no other homework in the English class in order to allow students time to complete their projects.

They first brainstorm potential topics. Students are presented with a sampling of different possible formats. The documentation requirement is explained. (MLA documentation with endnotes rather than parenthetical citations which would interrupt the flow of the project) Students are informed of the Reader’s Theatre component that comes into play at the end of the project. (a group finds a common theme among their projects and puts together a script that outlines that theme and includes performance of at least one of the pieces from each member of the group)

Melinda’s students get creative in the presentation of their final projects. The first year they were turned in, students turned their traditional papers in with traditional folders. In following years, students got very creative. For example, for a project on Judy Garland, a student made each piece look like an enlarged piece of film and put them all in a film canister. A student working on Babe Ruth had all of his information on enlarged baseball cards. Works on Tiger Woods came in miniature golf bags with the papers rolled up to look like golf clubs.

**Multi-genre works do not have to be biographical investigations. Multi-genre works can be about issues or places or historical investigations if you design the topic selection that way. There were questions about this in terms of how to design research questions, narrowing focus and refining topics. This project is not necessarily one to promote that kind of thinking. Because you’re working with multiple genres, the focus is necessarily broad. Melinda talked about how she has students do this assignment during the first quarter/semester and then during the second semester, has students do a more traditional research project (I believe she said an I-Search)

With multi-genre, you don’t necessarily need a lot of facts because it allows for fact and fiction. Students can extrapolate and extend information, make conjectures about what might have been said, what might have happened. For example: with the mini-project we did in the workshop, our topic was the Beatles. One of the facts we discovered about the Beatles was that they took a tour to Hamburg. One of the genres we considered for that “fact” was a letter from one of the band members home. Obviously we cannot know what was written home or even if there were letters sent home. If there were, though, what information was likely to have been included? Maybe something about the unfamiliar city? (would require some research on Hamburg) Maybe something about the tensions in the band if there were? Those fiction projects would require the integration of facts learned from their research. **

Assessment of multi-genre projects:
Students do self-evaluation and then the teacher evaluates the project as a whole, not as individual pieces. There is one rubric for the entire project and there are comments on each piece, but not a rubric for each genre. See the hand-outs for rubrics. Different categories are weighted differently. During the project, students keep process journals which tell what they did each day. Students turn those in at the end of each week and the teacher evaluates them to make sure that students are working or to see where they need some assistance. Additionally, the teacher should specify some genres that *must* be included and then allow students choice about other genres. (See hand-outs for possibilities)

Peruse the following links for examples of multi-genre projects:

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Last Updated April 11, 2011

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