The Multi-Genre Paper
Here are the parameters I had the students note for the MultiGenre assignment — read more about it in the post below — they filled in the spaces on the handout as a sort of roadmap to complete their assignment.
Click the image to download a blank handout you can use to your own ends.
Not much to add to yesterday’s post other than the fact that the students are unbelievably excited to participate in this “writing” assignment. A few classes had the opportunity to see a multigenre poem and go through an example multigenre paper, which just made their enthusiasm build to an almost uncontrollable level.
No joke.
Whereas I’ve always held some disdain for this paper, I can see now its usefulness, and the fact that it allows the students unbridled freedom while adhering to the confines of a few prescribed writing forms.
Tomorrow: A poem about multigenre writing, from Tom Romano; An example multigenre paper; My students’ attack; A contract with the teacher.
Filed under: Lesson Plans, Writing, handouts
I had my kids do a multigenre assignment last year as their final project. I can’t wait to see what your kids do! I have a few changes to make, but am planning to do it once again in the spring.
I’m assuming they did pretty well if you’re already planning on using it again. Was it fun? What was their topic? How did you grade the whole thing?
[...] I took my multigenre assignment from Tom Romano’s book, Blending Genre, Altering Style: Writing Multigenre Papers, wherein he writes about this style of writing: A multigenre paper arises from research, experience, and imagination. It is not an uninterrupted, expository monolog nor a seamless narrative nor a collection of poems. A multigenre paper is composed of many genres and subgenres, each piece self-contained, making a point of its own, yet connected by theme or topic and sometimes by language, images and content. In addition to many genres, a multigenre paper may also contain many voices, not just the author’s. The trick is to make such a paper hang together. (x-xi) [...]
My choice of multigenre was a last ditch effort to “cover the standards” when I was running out of time at the end of the year. My students chose a decade and an issue/topic from that decade to create a multigenre project from. The kids LOVED it. The first question my kids from last year ask me is “are they going to do the writing genre thing like we did?” At first, I thought it was because they wanted to make sure I was giving my students this year just as much work as they had to do last year! But, after talking to a few of them, that was their favorite assignment–even though it was so much work.
I will have to look through my files and see what rubric I used. I think it was pretty simple though. # of genres, # of mistakes, voice, overall appearance–because they had to package theirs. So, for Margret Sanger–I had a medical kit that was filled with birth control paraphenilia and genre writing on doctor’s forms, letters, etc. I had one on Rosa Parks–packaged in a bus with genres written on bus tickets, police records, etc. It was fun and a few of my kids did amazingly well.
I am changing the topic this year-maybe. I haven’t really decided. But I do know that I will do a mini one right away after break about themselves, so that I don’t have to spend so much instructional time teaching the logistics for the final project.
Had I but had access to this a month ago! My honors kiddos are working on multigenre. It’s not as together as I would have liked it to be, but at least I have something to rip off for next semester’s crop ;o)
[...] research into a multigenre paper on the same topic my students wrote on earlier in the year: “Who am I?” And their papers were phenomenal. Not because they followed the rules of MLA (as a matter of [...]
Hey, i am a 7th grade student working on a multi genre project and its a load of work! Dont think im a slacker who just wants teachers to lay off the work cause im not. But just remember that too much work will make us not like you and my teacher told us that the multi genre requirements that she gave us was from her multi genre project in COLLEGE! SHE GAVE US A COLLEGE LEVEL RUBRIC!!!! please dont maker the same mistake and pile work on your students:)
I heard of MGP’s back in 2005 and attempted my first one that fall with an upper-level high school English class who had just studied war literature. (Stuff like The Things They Carried, Hiroshima, Maus, Black Hawk Down)
My students dug into the MGP with some fear. I asked them to choose a controversial topic of deep interest to them. The high schoolers made me proud with their maturity as they investigated AIDS in Africa, the Katrina disaster, euthanasia, teen pregnancy, and music piracy.
Despite the amount of work needed to write well across many genres, my class overwhelmingly enjoyed their MGPs. Many told me they had no idea that they could actually make a difference in issues that matter, but the MGP opened up their eyes to the simplicity of writing a brochure or creating the script for a radio spot.
I look forward to introducing a new group of English students to the MGP this fall via my war lit unit.