Sarah Rehim

Multi-Genre Research Unit

TE 408 (Meritt)
4/29/08

Unit Overview: Outside The Box: A New Look at Culture,

Perspective and Research

This unit is intended to fall at the end of the students’ ninth

grade year. The overall, overarching theme of the year can be
summed up as “identity.” We’ve examined identity through a
number of different units and their correlating lenses. Most recently,
we finished the text The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time
Indian, which anchored a unit on multicultural literature, dual and
dueling identities, and how we construct our personal, self-reflective
identities (i.e. “who are we to ourselves? why is this so?”) The last
piece of the puzzle for the assumed curriculum is a research
project, which is intended to scaffold conceptually from the
multicultural literature unit.

This unit assumed that students have had little exposure to

research projects and assignments. They’re all coming from a
middle school setting which focuses primarily on literature
comprehension, as well as grammar and language acquisition. The
research project is typically given anywhere from the tenth through
twelfth grade years, with certain districts assigning them multiple
years. However, studies have shown that very little is done in the
classroom that gives students the procedural knowledge to inform
and guide the process of research collection and presentation for
students. This unit serves a twofold purpose; the first is to show
students new modes and methods of research and the second is to
assess what they have learned about research through guided
inquiries into their work and an eventual presentation of new
information gathered through research that answers specific,
student inquiry-based questions regarding a culture of their choice.

Over the course of the unit, multiple “multies” are utilized.

First and foremost, students’ multiple intelligences were
considered. Students in English classes cannot be expected to be
efficient readers and writers in only the most traditional academic
sense. Students have interests ranging from the social, political,
ethical and religious, and all of these unique spheres of their
identities combine to shape what they know, experience, and, more
importantly, what they want to know (their inquiries). Beyond that,
students have artistic, literary and technological talents that can
and should be brought into their classroom experiences in order to
create a more dialogic experience. This unit addresses the unique
challenge of how to do that, and how to involve students in the
learning processes of themselves and their peers.

Getting into the specifics of the multies considered in this

unit, one of the major components is multimedia literacy.
Specifically, students are called upon to join and maintain, as a
class, a Wikispace. This space both organizes the data students
collect over the course of their research and keeps the entire class
informed as to what everyone else is looking at and achieving. The
Wikispace, which is being treated as a new media tool for students,
is actually the anchor text of this unit. It is the piece that reigns in
all the other pedagogical processes together. Beyond that, students
are exposed to the World Wide Web and the plethora of different
genres it contains throughout this unit, including web clips on sites
such as YouTube, as well as official government and organization
websites. The assumption is that students are not seeing these
artifacts for the first time, but that possibly, for the first time, they
are beginning to think about them as texts and resources from
which natural inquiry springs. After all, they will have just spent an
entire unit (and really, an entire year) uncovering how these items
shape their identities. If these things shape what students already
know about their surrounding worlds and experiences, how can they
not shape what they desire to know?

Multimodal and multigenre studies, it should be noted,

are the glue holding this entire unit together. The underlying theme
students should be taking away from this unit is how audience and
purpose come together to shape the form of a product or
presentation. Assuming the different needs and expectations of
various audiences and rationales, students should come to discover
that there is no one magical genre, such as a thesis paper or film,
which suits every one. This is why we continue to search out new
genres through which to spread information; each functions in a
different way and should be given a different treatment. At the end
of this unit, students should have begun thinking about how the
“real-life” tools out there, such as the Internet and television,
comprise different genres that all do something. What they do, how
they do it, why they do it, and who they do it for are ideas
students should be considering, even if they are not aware they are
considering them.

This unit culminates in the presentation of a project that calls

on students to think about the multiple modes and genres they
have discovered over the prefacing weeks, and the cultures they
have studied in tandem with these. This summative assessment
asks them to gather the resources and data they have collected
and choose one mode or genre by which to present their findings.
Their decision should ultimately be informed by the F= A+P formula,
and students must clearly and thoughtfully rationalize their
selections. In fact, this “rationale” of sorts is one of the most
crucial elements of their presentations, and the project rubric will
reflect that.

Finally, it is necessary to note again that while the overall

purpose of this unit is to introduce students to the research
process, this cannot be done successfully outside of some sort of
context or lens. The context for this unit is culture and cultural
inquiry, and students will understand this unit, hopefully, as a
“cultural” unit rather than a “research” unit, although their work
will consist of research. Thus, there are two sets of conceptual
ideas behind the unit. One pertains directly to research, and the
other to inquiries into foreign cultures. However, these ideas will all
overlap throughout the unit.

Context:

This unit is put together for a 9

th
• grade General
Literature course in a mostly white, rural-suburban
district. The overarching theme throughout the course is
the idea of “Identity,” which will be explored through
several genres of texts.
• Lessons in this unit are designed around 50-minute class
periods, 5 days a week.
• This is a 21-day unit and is intended to occur at the
end of the school year.

Themes:
 • Representations of culture
• “New genres” as texts
• Visual representation
• Artistic representation
• Shifting perspectives

Conceptual Ideas, Set 1:

• Why do we research?
• How do new findings influence our perspectives and
ideas not only on our newly acquired knowledge, but on
what we learned prior to the research?
• How do we research? What does researching look like?
• How do we put together a final research presentation
that suits the questions we’re asking and the audience
we’re aiming to inform? (Form= Audience + Purpose)

Conceptual Ideas, Set 2:

• What elements of a culture separate it from other

cultures or groups (ideologies, practices, traditions,
customs, etc.)?
• How does examining these separate components
strengthen and inform our knowledge of the culture as a
whole?
• How does understanding foreign cultures (which is any
culture one does not personally consider oneself a part
of) shape and change our own perspectives and
identities?
Rationale:

• The student research project is an often obligatory

element of a high school ELA curriculum, and has
traditionally encompassed the final assessment of a
research paper. Success rates on these papers vary
slightly, but it has been determined by researchers that
one of the most influential factors in high school grade
retention rates is failure on the research paper. There
are likely many reasons for this, and some may be
unique to specific students, districts, and the
circumstances of both. However, much of the problem
may simply be due to student’s lack of knowledge on
how we research, why we research, and how research
can actually be interesting and though-provoking.

• At the ninth grade level, students may not be across

the board prepared to take on writing a research paper
or completing a comprehensive research assignment.
Four weeks is an insufficient amount of time to teach
every aspect of researching and presenting research
findings. However, the duration is lengthy enough to
begin students’ thinking about inquiry-based research
and discovery, and to introduce them, in a low-risk
way, to some of the methods and modes of the
research genre.

• The inclusion of this unit immediately after the

multicultural literature unit is intended to scaffold the
knowledge and inquiries students gained while studying
new cultures and identities. It contextualizes their
research topic. The hope is that having them research a
 topic with which they have some exposure and
familiarity makes the task less daunting and allowing
them to choose the specific culture they research
provides for an inquiry-driven experience.

Prior research in a 9
th
• grade classroom turned up the
result that of each of the 6+1 writing traits, voice is
the one which students struggle most with. The
heavy focus on F=A+P directly addresses this challenge
through the lens of research conducting.

Objectives:

• Students will be able to utilize a new online space, the

Wikispace, for organizational and team-working purposes
• Students will be able to think critically and purposefully
about how audience and purpose affect the form of
presentation
• Students will be able to break down a large task, such
as a research project, into smaller, more manageable
artifacts
• Students will be able to see and articulate how good
research entails more than just books and internet
searches
• Students will be able to differentiate between “good”
and “bad” sources for research
• Students will be able to better grasp how to find and
present research in an assortment of modes that are
influenced by their audience and purposes
• Students will be able to become participants in each
other’s and their own inquiries through discussion and
 the Wikispace, rather than just turning in a research
paper that is solely between the teacher and the
student

Goals:
• Students will come to an understanding about what
form of presentation best fits the audience and purpose
they wish to inform on the culture they’ve researched –
this understanding will inform their choice of mode or
genre for their final presentation
• Students’ inquiries into their culture will be driven and
guided by their research discoveries – that is, what they
learn as they go will shape what they want to know
from that point on
- essentially, their new inquiries will scaffold their
prior inquiries

Task Analysis:

• Students can navigate and log onto the Internet in

class. *This unit assumes there is at least one computer
with Internet access in class, but enough for every
student in the media center.
• Students can discuss open and freely the Internet
resources they use regularly in different areas of their
lives.
• Students can act maturely and responsibly when asked
to navigate the school in search of questions and
research (on Day 1).
• Students can act maturely and responsibly in the media
center while utilizing the computers and other sources.
 • Students can regularly access the Internet outside of
school, either at home or another accessible location.
• Students can openly and honestly critique the work of
their peers, both inside and outside of class.
• Students are comfortable sharing personal presentations
in front of the class.
• Students are comfortable demonstrating their knowledge
of multimedia and technology in front of the class.
• Students have been exposed to various forms of
portfolios throughout the year (most recently the
multicultural literature unit portfolios), so the rationale
behind the Wikispace is not foreign to them.

Michigan ELA Standards:

• CE 1.1: Understand and practice writing as a recursive

process
 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3

• CE 1.2: Use writing, speaking, and visual expression for

personal understanding and growth
 1.2.2

• CE 1.3: Communicate in speech, writing, and multimedia

using content, form, voice, and style appropriate to the
audience and purpose (e.g. to reflect, persuade, inform,
analyze, entertain, inspire, etc.)
 1.3.1,1.3.2, 1.3.4, 1.3.5, 1.3.6, 1.3.7, 1.3.8, 1.3.9
• CE 1.4: Develop and use the tools and practices of
inquiry and research – generating, exploring, and
refining important questions; creating a hypothesis or
thesis; gathering and studying evidence; drawing and
composing a report
 1.4.1, 1.4.2, 1.4.3, 1.4.4, 1.4.5, 1.4.6, 1.4.7

• CE 1.5: Produce a variety of written, spoken, multigenre

and multimedia works, making conscious choices about
language, form, style, and/or visual representation for
each work (e.g. poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction
stories, academic and literary essays, proposals, memos,
manifestos, business letters, advertisements, prepared
speeches, group and dramatic performances, poetry
slams, and digital stories).
 1.5.2, 1.5.3, 1.5.4, 1.5.5

• CE 2.1: Develop critical reading, listening and viewing

strategies
 2.1.8, 2.1.10, 2.1.11

• CE 2.3: Develop as a reader, listener and viewer for

personal, social, and political purposes, through
independent and collaborative reading
 2.3.4, 2.3.6, 2.3.8

• CE 3.4: Examine mass media, film, series fiction, and

other texts from popular culture
 3.4.1, 3.4.2, 3.4.4
Summative Assessment:

• The summative assessment for this unit is two-fold. As

students progress through the unit, they will conduct
research into a number of different aspects of their
respective cultures, all in different modes and genres.
Their findings will be posted to their personal pages on
the class Wikispace every week. At the end of the unit,
students will be graded on their Wiki contributions.

• The second part of the summative assessment will be a

presentation of their findings using one of the modes or
genres examined in class OR another of their own
thinking, providing they have prior permission from the
teacher first. An assignment sheet and rubric for this
assessment accompanies the unit.

Unit Overview References:

• The elements of this conceptual unit overview are

derived from Peter Smagorinsky’s notion of “backward
design.”

 Smagorinsky, Peter. Teaching English By Design.

Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2008. chs. 8, 9, 11, 14

• The overarching concepts of students as active

participants in research and the benefits of research are
borrowed from Carlin Borsheim and Robert Petrone, as
well as Jim Burke.

 Borsheim, Carlin, and Robert Petrone. "Teaching

The Research Paper For Local Action." The English
Journal Mar. 2006: 78-83.

 Burke, Jim. The English Teacher’s Companion.

Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2008. chs. 10, 11, 12,
13