Multi-Genre Paper

I really like the idea of using different genres to tell a story.  The article talked about how much more interesting and engaging this format is for the student who is producing it, but imagine how much more interesting this type of report would be to read.  To me it seems that a multi-genre paper would be far more entertaining than a regular plain Jane research paper.

We talked in class about how important it is for students to take information in and synthesize it.  We discussed that students really know the information if they can take what they have researched and use it in some creative way.  The student has not just memorized in the short term for the test a random fact that is meaningless to them.  The student has taken information and applied it to a different situation that causes the student to really know the fact.

I also like the creative aspect of this project.  I like that it is sort of backwards from how it is normally done.  The article stated that this type of paper takes the research and plants it so to speak in a format that displays how the information could have been gathered by a researcher.  This puts the reader of the paper in the unique seat of discovery.  The reader must delve deep down into the gathered reconstituted research to put the story together for themselves.  Genius.  I believe that since the reader has to use these different peices to peice together the story, the reader will also learn more from reading this type of paper as opposed to traditional research papers.

I like the students in the article can not wait to tell my mother about this type of paper.  My mother teaches computer skills to freshmen.  She works with a team of teachers that are encouraged to work together to teach these students that they share.  I believe that I need to tell my mother about this paper and have her talk to her teammate and my classmate, Nicole about a possible collaboration for a multi-genre paper in their classes.  I am excited about that. I am even more excited about doing this with my 3rd graders.  My head is full of ideas about how I can do this with my students.  I know that I will not be able to set my students free on something like this.  They will need lots of modeling and I think at first it would be best for them to work in small groups on one genre at a time.  I will still have to think about how I want to do this more and formulate some specific plans.