Can You Write a Cat: Genre Alphabet
Purpose of Exercise: This exercise is designed to discuss the difference between topic and genre.
Description: This is an exercise for helping students understand the difference between topics and genres. The instructor will guide students in generating a (non-exhaustive) classroom list of genres. Sharing the genres as a group gives the instructor and the students an opportunity to discuss whether something is a topic or a genre (or potentially both). A projector and whiteboard helps, but is not strictly necessary. Students will need a pen and paper OR a laptop to create their lists.
Suggested Time: 35 minutes
Procedure:
Introduce the activity by telling the students that you have a sentence stem that will help them differentiate between a topic and a genre.
Write the sentence stem “Can you write/compose a ____________________________?”
If whatever students fill in the blank make sense, it is probably a genre.
Write “cat” in the blank as a non-example.
Explain that a cat isn’t a genre because you can’t write a cat. You can write ABOUT a cat. So a cat is a topic, not a genre.
Call on a few students to give some examples of a genre they might use to write about a cat. Ie. poem, comic, description, blog, meme, etc.
Transition to the next activity by informing students that we are going to create a classroom list of possible genres for use in the class.
Have them take out a piece of paper or Word document and write each letter of the alphabet on a different line.
Make an example on the overhead projector
Students will try to think of a genre for each letter of the alphabet. The student that has the most letters with genres wins the game.
Give students about 7 to 9 minutes to generate a list.
They may need some help getting started, so you can say for instance a list is a genre and that starts with “L” so there’s a free one for everyone.
It is fun if the instructor plays as well.
Call time and explain that each student will share their genre for each letter of the alphabet one at a time. First everyone will share their “A” genre and the “B” and so on and so forth. If they don’t’ have one or it has already been said, they should just say “Pass.”
Create an order in which to share (up and down each row, or across each row, etc.)
As students share, type it on the screen.
If questionable suggestions come up (more of a topic than a genre) have the class discuss whether it is a genre or not. Use the sentence stem test! Sometimes things could be both like an opera. You could write ABOUT the opera but also could write an opera.
If time permits, go through the whole alphabet. Post the document online for students to refer to. This could come in handy for the 3rd project. You could potentially add to the list.
Make sure you explain that this isn’t an exhaustive list.
Give a “prize” to the winner, or just declare them the winner!