Tom Romano moved the hearts and minds of many writers and teachers with the release of his book Blending Genre, Altering Style nine years ago. As a teacher, I was drawn to multigenre writing because it challenged my students’ traditional notions around style, organization, voice, and theme. Multigenre writing is disruptive in nature, and as a result, it’s incredibly engaging to read. Creating multigenre pieces requires an appreciation of each genre’s effect on a reader and the ability to gather genres together around a theme with purpose, understanding all the while that our intended message may be different from the one each reader takes away. This blending of styles, structures, and voices transforms orderly text into something of a symphony, inviting greater possibilities for connection, interpretation, and meaning. These resources provide further thought, strategies, and samples of multigenre writing:
- Read or listen to Tom Romano’s reflections on multigenre writing at Write in the Middle.
- Find multigenre lesson plans and some basic tools for supporting the process at ReadWriteThink.
- Explore resources and prompts for each part of the process at Your Multigenre Web.
- Consider these approaches and lesson plans, intended to support multigenre writing on the web.
- Learn how to use multigenre approaches to deepen vocabulary understandings.
- A variety of samples are provided here.
- Katie Eiguren and Becky LeBoeuf, former Michigan State students, put their complete curriculum guide online.
- Dr. Nancy Mack provides resources and samples here.
- Read Write Think made this list of mentor texts for multigenre writing work available.
- This collection of projects from Web English Teacher is helpful for those beginning this work as well.
