I would love to use multigenre projects in my classroom and one thing that I wondered was how to structure it for students. The text mentioned to create a time line as class for when things will be due. I think this will help students manage the large project and allowing their input will help them have more ownership over the tasks. I also think that it is important to have weekly goal sheets. The time line is great for overall but when students are faced with a large task it can be overwhelming. The weekly goals will help students to see their progress and keep focused.
Another thing that I liked from the text was that it included a lot of peer editing and group work even though students were focused on different topics. The peer conference sheet in the book is great. I copied it and put it in my filling box of ‘teacher stuff’ because I think peer conferences/editing is useful but students have a hard time putting things other than “I like it…”!
If I were to have my students complete a project like this I would definitely use the “Museum” idea to have other students and parents view what the students have done. Knowing that their parents are going to come is a great motivator.
I love the idea of “which famous person should make it back to civilization”, I think that topics like that are motivating and interesting to students. It is also a great way to introduce the kind of writing that goes into multigenre projects. The debating and rebutal that goes along with the project is great because I think that students need to practice debating skills .
