Multigenre Research

I found this article very interesting and though provoking. I love reading about teachers that are willing to engage in well constructed, difficult, and beneficial activities with their students. The project discussed in this article is a time consuming activity that requires a large amount of work for both the teacher and student. But, in the end, I think that this activity would be extremely beneficial for any student as they learned how to look deeper into factual information, formulate interpretations about it, and produce individualized work. In my elementary school, they have a similar program set up. Type 3 is a gifted program that allows students to choose a topic, research about it, and produce a product of their choosing. This product can be a website, a movie, an event, a club, etc. The students have full control over what topic they choose, but they must stick with this topic throughout the entire year. They are given computers and research time 4 days a week. The project discussed in this article seems like a more thorough and thought-out version of the Type 3 I have observed. In Type 3, the students aren't necessarily asked to make and draw upon their own interpretations of the material they find. I wish this wasn't the case. I wish the students were pushed a little bit further and asked to include some of their own thoughts, opinions, and interpretations about the information they find. But, I do admire the school for including this program into their curriculum. I do wish it was open to more than just the gifted students, but I do give them much credit for their effort!
Chapter 12 Quick Thoughts:
-I found the sample year long plan for upper grades writing workshop very helpful. This is a great model to refer to when planning a schedule of your own.
-I really like the idea of students writing about a variety of aspects of one topic---the way an author writes, the information given, the perspective, etc.






Find article here: https://docs.google.com/viewera=v&pid=gmail&attid=0.1&thid=12e7726df07e4d64&mt=application/pdf&url=https://mail.google.com/mail/ui%3D2%26ik%3D4e488948fa%26view%3Datt%26th%3D12e7726df07e4d64%26attid%3D0.1%26disp%3Dsafe%26realattid%3Df_gksdq6i10%26zw&sig=AHIEtbRLX4eWw5GmuLerYHvZci4uBNcSQQ&pli=1