Through the completion of my multigenre research paper, I learned a lot. I learned a lot about my topic of critical literacy as well as ways to improve my writing and research skills. I have never really liked writing papers, but being given the option to write about anything within elementary literacy, I became much more interested in my research. The actual research was a lot more fun than normal research and the creation of the genre pieces was tons of fun.
After finishing my project, I feel as though I have developed a better sense of the way I would like my future students to complete research papers. The paper itself will always be the hardest part for many children, but when given an opportunity to write about whatever a person chooses, the paper becomes more fun. I feel as though the genre pieces could be used even by themselves without the paper in certain circumstances. I am positive I will at least use the genre pieces in my future teaching. I really enjoyed taking what I had researched and had knowledge on and turning it into something else. It was a creative way to reiterate what I already knew and make the knowledge even more concrete.
I was thinking that if the research paper itself were presented as just another genre it might not be so daunting. I think research papers get built up to crazy sizes in students' minds because teachers make such a big deal about. If we asked them to approach the research paper as just another genre by learning what it is that makes it a research paper, it might be a little easier to do, don't you think?
ReplyDeletePatty, that is an interesting idea. Given that students don't already feel overwhelmed by the term "research paper", it may just work!
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