As I have been reading the chapters for this class, the one text that I can't seem to get off my mind is the Blending Genre, Altering Style by Tom Romano. When Jessie first said that this book is a quick read, I didn't really know if I believed her, but when I picked it up for the first time, I ended up staying up until 2 am reading it! Now all I can think about when considering writing is how I will incorporate a multigenre paper into my future lessons. For this post, I'm sure I am supposed to lean more towards the Writing Process book rather than Romano's text, I want/need to discuss it now. While I think that this type of paper is an awesome option that English teachers can offer to their students, I still am a bit hesitant as to how I would introduce this type of paper to my classes.
I was discussing the idea of multigenre papers with my fiance, and I was trying to describe to him what exactly goes into this type of writing. What I got back was the most confused look that I had ever seen on his face. Romano first tries to describe the multigenre paper as "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" (p. xi). When I first opened the book, I was really confused by this description, but after reading the first example paper I fully understood what Romano meant. I really liked how before Romano went into great depth discussing multigenre papers, he didn't assume that his audience had a great understanding of what this type of paper is. This way of introducing the mulitgenre paper is a great way to do it in a class. While my future students may know how to write in all of the differnt genres separately, putting them together as one collective piece may be a bit mind boggling for them. Next week I'll probably touch a bit more on the idea of using this type of paper in the classroom after I have completed the text book.
RESOURCE LINK
http://thereflectiveteacher.wordpress.com/2006/12/07/the-multi-genre-paper/
Since I am on the topic of multigenre papers, I googled it and found a blog post from a teacher who used multigenre writing in her own classroom. She provides a worksheet to help students understand how to use the different writing style to write about the same theme/topic.
