September 2008

A Teacher's Guide to the Multigenre Research Paper by Melinda Putz
Review written by Carm, RRVWP Teacher Consultant

I really enjoyed A Teacher's Guide to the Multigenre Research Project. Melinda Putz presents a "twist" on the research paper in her book. This isn't the first time I've heard of this kind of project. Melinda Putz doesn't claim to have "invented" the assignment. She has, however, explained it in a way that is very explicit and user friendly. She includes at the end of each chapter her actual handouts she provides for students. I found myself frequently flipping to these in order to make sense of her explanations. Putz includes student work to illustrate the explanations and goes a step further by including a companion CD with PDF and MS word files of each of her handouts for teacher use as well as one complete student multigenre project and many snippets from other students' work as well. Because much of the multigenre project is visual, the CD option really added my my understanding of the projects students produced.

It's impressive to consider all the ways a unit like this can impact students reading, researching, and writing. They must do a decent amount of higher level thinking, inferring, and synthesizing and I am always looking for ways to encourage that in students.

Finally, it's a project that --I-- want to do. Instantly I was running through possible topics in my mind and was trying to think of different genres I could use to depict the essential elements of those topics. It's easy to get excited about something so creative and I have a feeling that would be the same for students too. I am definitely going to try this with my students I just need to figure out how to adapt it to our school setting (block schedule) and at what grade level I want to begin.

For those curious about ways to engage students in research in creative ways this is a book I would highly recommend.