Romano

The Romano book is pretty entertaining. The multigenre papers are well-written and interesting, the chapters are short, informative, and move quickly.

 What is most appealing to me is that the idea that the freedom to write anything in any form or genre can remove barriers to good writing in some students. I know I would be satisfied with a multigenre paper that followed all the guidelines for a research paper. The key to having the subject make an impact on your students is to have them invest some of themselves into it. If they are merely looking up facts and reporting them in so many words, randomly inserting their references, like the teacher says in chapter six, then they are not investing themselves, their time and energy, maybe, but not themselves. If they assume a character’s voice, like in the Billy the Kid book, and create a sense of reality out of a written account of an event far removed from themselves, then they have invested themselves. This, too me, would give a better sense of how much a student actually learned - website

It also allows students the freedom to use what works for them. While the requirements for a multigenre paper usually seem to include some expository writing, persuasive writing, etc., it is usually the fiction, or the poetry that ends up moving me, that makes the piece memorable. You could just ask for the facts, but why cut the students and yourself short? That’s just the way I see it. I do think it is valuable for the students, as well. It allows a black kid to use a black kid voice without getting penalized.

It would take some planning, no doubt, to get it to work - read more You’d have to put aside a chunk of time to teach, or at least to refresh, a lot of genres. And that would just be to give the students a choice to use it, because assigning one multigenre paper is acceptable, but to require that all papers be that way would be as stifling as requiring all five-paragraph essays. I think it would be worth it, though.