Literacy Unit- Genre Study

General Background: I did my unit on a genre study that mixed Historical Fiction, Mystery and Tall Tales all together. The first ten days, that I used for inquiry two were the introduction to the unit. We started off the unit by creating a KWL chart, then read a book from each genre. We used these books to generate list about the setting, characters, problem, solution and moral from each genre.

Finishing up my unit for my genre study, has left me with mix feelings. First of all, I am proud of myself for being able to create an unit when not a lot of materials were given to me. This is not a striped curriculum like I have been seeing with many other subjects. I was given points that the students had to learn, six weeks to create unit around this. Second, I feel as if there is not enough time in the day to teach all the material that I want my students to walk away from this unit with. With the MEAP, DWA, Fifth Grade Camp, Power Outages and student led parent teacher conferences, it seemed that my unit was very inconsistent on when we did the lessons. Also, it seems that we will never get to all of the material because there is ALWAYS something that is coming up (I hear this will be an issue for all teachers!).

I was thrilled with the response of flip-chart and character-setting drawings. All of the fifth grade teachers asked for copies of this lesson along with the flip chart template. I was glad to see my ideas were being used by other teachers. Also, I felt that it showed that I was planning and trying to put a lot of thought into my lesson.

While writing their own Tall Tale, was a great idea and my teacher thought I had a great plan, we figured out we would not have enough time to go through the entire writing process. (Originally, my goal of this lesson was for students to play around with tall tales and see if they can get that deeper understanding of what a tall tale is). While I think the lesson still went well, I was worried that the students were rushed and did not have enough time to dig deep into the genre. When doing this unit again, I would wait until the end of the six weeks to think about writing a Tall Tale. I think my some of my students may have had a hard time because they were still unsure what a tall tale is. Also, next time I will have my students do research and online activities (if the school will allow it) to help the have more hands on experience with the books.

While my unit went well, there were a couple of things that I was not expecting. I was not expecting my students to struggle with note-taking without any lines. They were writing too big or too small and running out of room. On the first day of using the flip-book, this took away from the students learning the materials. Also, after ten days of taking about these three genres I found the students were bored and ready to move on. While the flip book is a great organized way of holding the information, the lessons were very similar. Next, time I would try to condense some of these lesson so the students would not become 'bored'. I also found that some students that their favorite genre is mystery, so when we were filling out the chart they had the most to contribute to mystery. I should have taken more time to read more examples of Tall Tales and Historical Fiction so the students had a better base knowledge before we started filling out the charts.

Lastly, while I love the idea of a genre study, however, I found that studying three genres was hard for many students (this is how my school district has this set up). The lesson became long when we had to cover three different genres in one day. We would spend just one day talking about the characters of the three genres. Even if I could cut the conversations down to eight minutes a genre, it would still be a twenty four minute mini-lesson. This did not leave enough time for the students to explore reading or writing about the genres, outside of note-taking. Also, I felt that many students were confusing the genres because there was so much information to think about.


Answering the Questions:
I felt that the students struggled with the genre of Tall Tales across all three of my lessons. Many students were not sure what the genre really consisted of. So I can across that digging deep was hard for them. My students also struggled and worried about the picture they can to draw that combined character and setting. They were so worried about how it would look instead of the important aspect of the project.

My alternate reads for my students work was I was surprised by how they struggled with note-taking. This is a skill we are working on for sixth grade. I thought when they had the boxes and the information on the board, this would have been a great modeling of organizing their data. However, the students struggled with how big to write, their writing wasn't neat because there were no lines. Or there were too man notes and not enough room. Next time, I will teach a mini-lesson on strategies on note taking with this kind of set up. I think this will help the students and not have the lesson get away from my main point.

I was amazed by how well my students did picking apart the genres. They did a great job of reading one book to guide their thinking about an entire genre. Also, they did an awesome job of listening to a story Casey At Bat to guide their thinking about writing their own Tall Tales. I was surprised about how many of them were able to pick up on idea of Today's Tall Tales.

As for re-teaching any of the materials from my lessons, we are going to spend the next four weeks working on the genres, character, setting, problem, solution, moral and theme in my classroom. The students will revisit the material, write more from the genres and read many more examples. For the next four weeks, we read aloud a picture book from one of these genres as well. The students are also ask to read one chapter book from these genres during silent reading time.

If I was going to teach the same lessons again, I would change a couple of things. I would change studying three genres at one time. Also, I would change having the students write their tall tale piece in the middle. I think I would change the mystery writing piece and the Tall Tale Writing piece because I found the students had more background knowledge about mystery than Tall Tales.This will help students to become exposed to more Tall Tales and I think their writing will improve because of this.

All in all, I really enjoyed teaching my unit!