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The study of genre is not an exact science. Some texts may belong in more than one genre. For example: Romeo and Juliet is a drama, a tragedy, and an Elizabethan play. The idea of genre is open to discussion and there is good reason to discuss genre. Understanding genre will help you know what to expect from a text based on its genre; it will also help you notice when an author is playing with your expectations. Wouldn't you like to be in on the joke? First, you must learn some basics:

Main Genres and Subgenres

Some consider these to be the main genres of writing: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, and folklore. Every piece of writing can fall into one of these categories. Each main genre has a group of subgenres. Each subgenre has as set of characteristics that you must learn in order to identify them. This list does not contain all of the possible subgenres, but it should give you a pretty thorough overview.

1. Fiction: stories that come from the author's imagination.
Historical Fiction: based on a person or event from history.

Science Fiction: dealing with aliens, the distant future, or advanced technology.

Fantasy: containing monsters, magic, or other supernatural elements.

Realistic Fiction: a story that could have happened, but didn't.

2. Nonfiction: writing that is true or factual.

Informational Writing: provides information on a topic.

Persuasive Writing: attempts to influence the reader.

Autobiography: the story of one's life told by oneself.

Biography: the story of one's life told by another.

3. Drama: writing that is meant to be acted on a stage (a play).

Comedy: has a happy ending.

Tragedy: ends in death and sadness.

4. Poetry: writing that is concerned with the beauty of language

5. Folklore: stories handed down through speech from generation to generation.

Fairy Tale: a story with magic, monsters, and/or talking animals (like fiction / fantasy, but part of the oral tradition).

Fable: a very short story that has a moral or life lesson; usually has talking animals as main characters.

Myth: has gods or goddesses and often accounts for how something came to be.

Legend: an exaggerated story about something that may have been real at one time.

Tall Tale: stories set in the Wild West; the main character's strengths, skills, or size have been exaggerated and the tone is funny.

Even More Genre Worksheets

Here are five more genre worksheets.
Even More Genre Worksheets

Genre and Author's Purpose Worksheet - Read the descriptions of the texts and determine the genre and subgenre. Then write a sentence explaining your answer. You will also identify the author's purpose. Suggested reading level for this text: Grade 5-9
Genre and Author's Purpose Worksheet RTF
Genre and Author's Purpose Worksheet PDF
Preview Genre and Author's Purpose Worksheet in Your Web Browser

Genre Lesson - Slide show lesson on genre and subgenre. Includes a review activity after the lesson.
Genre Lesson PowerPoint
Preview Genre Lesson in Your Web Browser

Genre Quiz - Match the definitions to the terms and answer multiple choice questions. Available in two different test forms to help you prevent student cheating.
Genre Quiz Form A - RTF
Genre Quiz Form B - RTF
Genre Quiz Form A - PDF
Genre Quiz Form B - PDF
Preview Genre Quiz Form A in Your Web Browser
Preview Genre Quiz Form B in Your Web Browser

Genre Practice 1 - A warm-up PowerPoint review where students identify the genre and subgenre of 5 stories.
Genre Practice 1 PowerPoint
Preview Genre Practice 1 in Your Web Browser

Genre Practice 2 - PowerPoint warm up review where students identify the genre and subgenre of 5 stories.
Genre Practice 2 PowerPoint
Preview Genre Practice 2 in Your Web Browser

Genre Game - Students play as a small fish trying to get to the light house. Along the way they will eat worms, hide from bigger fish, and answer HUNDREDS of genre questions. So much fun, they won't even notice that they're learning!
Play Genre Piranha - Literary Genre Review Game

Common Core State Standards Related to Genre and Subgenre

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.9 - Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.

Expand to View All Common Core State Standards Related to Genre and Subgenre

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.K.9 - With prompting and support, compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in familiar stories.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.1.9 - Compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in stories.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.2.9 - Compare and contrast two or more versions of the same story (e.g., Cinderella stories) by different authors or from different cultures.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.9 - Compare and contrast the themes, settings, and plots of stories written by the same author about the same or similar characters (e.g., in books from a series)

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.4.9 - Compare and contrast the treatment of similar themes and topics (e.g., opposition of good and evil) and patterns of events (e.g., the quest) in stories, myths, and traditional literature from different cultures.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.9 - Compare and contrast stories in the same genre (e.g., mysteries and adventure stories) on their approaches to similar themes and topics.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.6.9 - Compare and contrast texts in different forms or genres (e.g., stories and poems; historical novels and fantasy stories) in terms of their approaches to similar themes and topics.

Looking For More Reading Worksheets?
Point of View Worksheets
Story Structure Worksheets
All Reading Worksheets

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Literary Genre | Categorizing Texts | Ereading Worksheets

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The study of genre is not an exact science. Some texts may belong in more than one genre. For example: Romeo and Juliet is a drama, a tragedy, and an Elizabethan play. The idea of genre is open to discussion and there is good reason to discuss genre.

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Materials | Wisconsin Indian Education Association Indian Mascot and Logo Task Force

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Taking a Stand is a video created by the Wisconsin Education Communication Board as part of the series Engage: State, Tribal, and Local Government. The video highlights work done by a class of high school investigating the "Indian" Mascot and Logo issue.

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The Cherokee People MS Lesson - Teachers (U.S. National Park Service)

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In this lesson plan, middle school students will understand the removal of the Cherokee from the state of Georgia and the introduction of white settlement into the previously native-occupied territory of North Georgia. Students will also gain an understanding of cultural elements of the Cherokee people through the use of primary and secondary documents.

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Letters

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The exhibition draws from the individual accounts and oral histories collected by the Voices of Civil Rights project, a collaborative effort of AARP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) and the Library of Congress. Made possible by generous support from AARP, the exhibition celebrates the donation of these materials to the Library of Congress and links them to key collections in the Library.

Rev. Timothy Ahrens

Rev. Timothy Ahrens undertook his own civil rights odyssey, visiting prominent people and places he had heard about in childhood.

I grew up in the North in a very privileged area. My father was an editor for a Christian magazine and interviewed Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders. As a child, I experienced civil rights at the dinner table, and the places were sort of embedded in my mind. They were places that were far away and horrible in the sight of the nightly news. In 2004, I visited people and places that were involved in the Civil Rights Movement. In Birmingham, my hair got cut by James Armstrong, whose children integrated Birmingham schools. I worshipped with Dr. Abraham Lincoln Woods, and he was Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth's right-hand man. I spent an evening at dinner with Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.

Effie Jones Bowers

Two years after nine black students faced violent mobs on their way to Little Rock's Central High School, Effie Jones Bowers ( standing before cameras) helped desegregate nearby Hall High School.

That first day was a scary day. We were trying not to be afraid. We were talking, and I believe they had blocked some cars that had come by, and people were hollering at us, and the police were all out there, and we just knew that we were going to try to be strong. They told us to just go straight and don't look back. We heard people calling us niggers and, you know, they just called us all kind of trash. So we kept going and we got to Hall and we went on up the steps and went in the school. When we got in the school that's where everybody was. They were all standing there in this hall. Then I looked up, and there was a huge Indian statue. I hadn't thought about there being a mascot in there. Then finally someone ushered us which way to go.

Alida Montiel

Alida Montiel awakened to the power of social protest-and the role Native Americans could play-through the filtered light of the nightly news. Montiel ( right) and her daughter, Smoyma, are members of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community.

Whatever information came out about the Civil Rights Movement about the marches, the March on Washington, I was glued to the TV. I saw Martin Luther King. I saw Jesse Jackson. I wondered, "Where are the Mexicans? Where are the Indians? They've got to be in there somewhere. We should be on that march." I told my father that I wanted to go to that march. But me being so young, he didn't want me to go. Years later, there was a Chicano Moratorium march in Los Angeles. I told my father again, "I want to go to that march." Again, he was scared because of the violence that might occur. When I was a sophomore in high school, myself and other Mexican-Indian students and Mexican students, Hispanic students, we formed the first-ever united Mexican-American student chapter at our high school.

Phyllis Ballenger

Phyllis Ballenger, Washington, D.C. Photograph by Lester Sloan, © AARP 2004 (45)

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Voices of Civil Rights Online Exhibition

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The exhibition draws from the individual accounts and oral histories collected by the Voices of Civil Rights project and celebrates the donation of these materials to the Library of Congress and links them to key collections in the Library.

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This website, a project of Teaching for Change , provides lessons, handouts, news, and resources for teaching about the role of everyday people in the Civil Rights Movement.

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This website, a project of Teaching for Change , provides lessons, handouts, news, and resources for teaching about the role of everyday people in the Civil Rights Movement.

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3 Sept 2020 Civil Rights FILMS

Freedom Riders

Threatened. Attacked. Jailed. Could you get on the bus?

Watch Film

The Vote | Interactive
Celebrate the strategies and tactics of the movement in a new interactive experience.

Video Gallery
Stream these American Experience documentaries anywhere, anytime. We will update this page as new films become available

Collection
The role of protest, agitation and struggle in the evolution of the country we live in today.

Film
One hundred years after the passage of the 19th Amendment, The Vote tells the dramatic culmination story of the hard-fought campaign waged by American women for the right to vote, a transformative cultural and political movement that resulted in the largest expansion of voting rights in U.S. history.

The Vote | Article
For many women, the 19 th Amendment was only the beginning of a much longer fight.

Collection
The history of America's ongoing struggle with race, democracy and justice.

Let's Stay in Touch! Dismiss

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Threatened. Attacked. Jailed. Could you get on the bus? Watch Film The Vote | InteractiveCelebrate the strategies and tactics of the movement in a new interactive experience. Video Gallery Stream these American Experience documentaries anywhere, anytime. We will update this page as new films become available Collection The role of protest, agitation and struggle in the evolution of the country we live in today.

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From the Catbird Seat: The official Poetry and Literature blog

From the Catbird Seat: The official Poetry and Literature podcast

Receive notifications about events, activities, and online resources

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List of All 180 Poems | Poetry 180 | Poet Laureate Projects | Poet Laureate | Poetry & Literature | Programs | Library of Congress

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From the Catbird Seat: The official Poetry and Literature blog From the Catbird Seat: The official Poetry and Literature podcast Receive notifications about events, activities, and online resources

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This is the place to be if you're trying to participate in a live poll

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"More is better." From the number of gigs in a cellular data plan to the horsepower in a pickup truck, this mantra is ubiquitous in American culture. When it comes to college students, the belief that more is better may underlie their widely-held view that laptops in the classroom enhance their academic performance. Laptops do in fact allow students to do more, like engage in online activities and demonstrations, collaborate more easily on papers and projects, access information from the internet, and take more notes. Indeed, because students can type significantly faster than they can write, those who use laptops in the classroom tend to take more notes than those who write out their notes by hand. Moreover, when students take notes using laptops they tend to take notes verbatim, writing down every last word uttered by their professor.

Obviously it is advantageous to draft more complete notes that precisely capture the course content and allow for a verbatim review of the material at a later date. Only it isn't. New research by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer demonstrates that students who write out their notes on paper actually learn more. Across three experiments, Mueller and Oppenheimer had students take notes in a classroom setting and then tested students on their memory for factual detail, their conceptual understanding of the material, and their ability to synthesize and generalize the information. Half of the students were instructed to take notes with a laptop, and the other half were instructed to write the notes out by hand. As in other studies, students who used laptops took more notes. In each study, however, those who wrote out their notes by hand had a stronger conceptual understanding and were more successful in applying and integrating the material than those who used took notes with their laptops.

What drives this paradoxical finding? Mueller and Oppenheimer postulate that taking notes by hand requires different types of cognitive processing than taking notes on a laptop, and these different processes have consequences for learning. Writing by hand is slower and more cumbersome than typing, and students cannot possibly write down every word in a lecture. Instead, they listen, digest, and summarize so that they can succinctly capture the essence of the information. Thus, taking notes by hand forces the brain to engage in some heavy "mental lifting," and these efforts foster comprehension and retention. By contrast, when typing students can easily produce a written record of the lecture without processing its meaning, as faster typing speeds allow students to transcribe a lecture word for word without devoting much thought to the content.

To evaluate this theory, Mueller and Oppenheimer assessed the content of notes taken by hand versus laptop. Their studies included hundreds of students from Princeton and UCLA, and the lecture topics ranged from bats, bread, and algorithms to faith, respiration, and economics. Content analysis of the notes consistently showed that students who used laptops had more verbatim transcription of the lecture material than those who wrote notes by hand. Moreover, high verbatim note content was associated with lower retention of the lecture material. It appears that students who use laptops can take notes in a fairly mindless, rote fashion, with little analysis or synthesis by the brain. This kind of shallow transcription fails to promote a meaningful understanding or application of the information.

If the source of the advantage for longhand notes derives from the conceptual processes they evoke, perhaps instructing laptop users to draft summative rather than verbatim notes will boost performance. Mueller and Oppenheimer explored this idea by warning laptop note takers against the tendency to transcribe information without thinking, and explicitly instructed them to think about the information and type notes in their own words. Despite these instructions, students using laptops showed the same level of verbatim content and were no better in synthesizing material than students who received no such warning. It is possible these direct instructions to improve the quality of laptop notes failed because it is so easy to rely on less demanding, mindless processes when typing.

It's important to note that most of the studies that have compared note taking by hand versus laptop have used immediate memory tests administered very shortly (typically less than an hour) after the learning session. In real classroom settings, however, students are often assessed days if not weeks after learning new material. Thus, although laptop users may not encode as much during the lecture and thus may be disadvantaged on immediate assessments, it seems reasonable to expect that the additional information they record will give them an advantage when reviewing material after a long delay.

Wrong again. Mueller and Oppenheimer included a study in which participants were asked to take notes by hand or by laptop, and were told they would be tested on the material in a week. When participants were given an opportunity to study with their notes before the final assessment, once again those who took longhand notes outperformed laptop participants. Because longhand notes contain students' own words and handwriting, they may serve as more effective memory cues by recreating the context (e.g., thought processes, emotions, conclusions) as well as content (e.g., individual facts) from the original learning session.

These findings hold important implications for students who use their laptops to access lecture outlines and notes that have been posted by professors before class. Because students can use these posted materials to access lecture content with a mere click, there is no need to organize, synthesize or summarize in their own words. Indeed, students may take very minimal notes or not take notes at all, and may consequently forego the opportunity to engage in the mental work that supports learning.

Beyond altering students' cognitive processes and thereby reducing learning, laptops pose other threats in the classroom. In the Mueller and Oppenheimer studies, all laptops were disconnected from the internet, thus eliminating any disruption from email, instant messaging, surfing, or other online distractions. In most typical college settings, however, internet access is available, and evidence suggests that when college students use laptops, they spend 40% of class time using applications unrelated to coursework, are more likely to fall off task, and are less satisfied with their education. In one study with law school students, nearly 90% of laptop users engaged in online activities unrelated to coursework for at least five minutes, and roughly 60% were distracted for half the class.

Technology offers innovative tools that are shaping educational experiences for students, often in positive and dynamic ways. The research by Mueller and Oppenheimer serves as a reminder, however, that even when technology allows us to do more in less time, it does not always foster learning. Learning involves more than the receipt and the regurgitation of information. If we want students to synthesize material, draw inferences, see new connections, evaluate evidence, and apply concepts in novel situations, we need to encourage the deep, effortful cognitive processes that underlie these abilities. When it comes to taking notes, students need fewer gigs, more brain power.
Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and regular contributor to NewYorker.com. Gareth is also the series editor of Best American Infographics, and can be reached at garethideas AT gmail dot com or Twitter @garethideas.

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A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop

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Students who used longhand remembered more and had a deeper understanding of the material

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Students do worse on quizzes when they use keyboards in class.

Renato Ganoza

Psych 101 was about to start, and Pam Mueller had forgotten her laptop at home. This meant more than lost Facebook time. A psychology grad student at Princeton, Mueller was one of the class teaching assistants. It was important she have good notes on the lecture. Normally she used her laptop to take notes, but, without it, she'd have to rely on a more traditional approach.

So she put pen to paper-and found something surprising.

Class just seemed better. "I felt like I had gotten so much more out of the lecture that day," she said. So she shared the story with Daniel Oppenheimer, the professor teaching the class.

"'I had a similar experience in a faculty meeting the other day,'" Mueller remembers him saying. "And we both sort of had that intuition that there might be something different about writing stuff down."

It turns out there is.

A new study -conducted by Mueller and Oppenheimer-finds that people remember lectures better when they've taken handwritten notes, rather than typed ones.

What's more, knowing how and why typed notes can be bad doesn't seem to improve their quality. Even if you warnlaptop-notetakers ahead of time, it doesn't make a difference. For some tasks, it seems, handwriting's just better.

The study comes at a ripe time for questions about laptop use in class. Educators still debate whether to allow students to bring their laptops into the classroom. And while researchers have found that laptop use during class-time tends to be distracting-not only do laptop-using students not perform as well academically, but also they're less happy with their education-Mueller and Oppenheimer's research seems to be the first quantitative attempt to compare laptops disconnected from the Internet with plain-old pencil and paper.

The study was conducted in three parts. At the beginning of each, students watched video of a lecture or a TED talk, and took notes on it either longhand or on laptops.

Students watched the video, completed difficult mental tasks for 30 minutes, then took a quiz on the content. In this group, longhand-notetakers outperformed laptop-notetakers on the quiz. Analysis of student notes showed that laptop-notetakers tended to transcribe a lot of the speaker's words verbatim. Mueller and Oppenheimer suspected that this was because those who typed notes were inclined to transcribe lectures, rather than process them. This makes sense: If you can type quickly enough, word-for-word transcription is possible, whereas writing by hand usually rules out capturing every word.

So students in the second group were given a warning. Before the laptop-users watched the lecture or took any notes on it, the study administrator told some of them:

People who take class notes on laptops when they expect to be tested on the material later tend to transcribe what they're hearing without thinking about it much. Please try not to do this as you take notes today. Take notes in your own words and don't just write down word-for-word what the speaker is saying.

The warning seemed to have no effect. The quiz showed that longhand-notetakers still remembered lecture content better than laptop-notetakers. And analyzing the notes that laptop-using students took, the two authors admit: "The instruction to not take verbatim notes was completely ineffective at reducing verbatim content."

The final group of students took the quiz a full week after watching a recorded lecture. Some of these students were allowed to study their notes for 10 minutes before taking the quiz. In this last group, longhand-notetakers who had time to study outperformed everyone else. Longhand-notetakers of any sort, in fact, did better on the quiz than laptop-notetakers.

What's more, if someone took verbatim notes on their laptop, then studying seemed more likely to hinder their performance on the quiz.

In other words, taking notes on a laptop seems to lead to verbatim notes, which make it tough to study well. And you can't successfully warn someone to keep them from taking verbatim notes if they're using a laptop.

"We don't write longhand as fast as we type these days, but people who were typing just tended to transcribe large parts of lecture content verbatim," Mueller told me. "The people who were taking notes on the laptops don't have to be judicious in what they write down."

She thinks this might be the key to their findings: Take notes by hand, and you have to process information as well as write it down. That initial selectivity leads to long-term comprehension.

"I don't think we're gonna get more people to go back to notebooks necessarily," Mueller said. "Tablets might be the best of both worlds-you have to choose what to write down, but then you have the electronic copy."

Incidentally, the two researchers might look at tablet use next. (They didn't include them in this study.) But they have busy scientific dockets outside this work, as neither of them specialize in educational psychology. Mueller researches questions of law and morality, and Oppenheimer tends to focus on decision-making and the psychology of democracy.

But the two say they've appreciated their foray into note-taking research, which stemmed from a real-life problem. "I think," Mueller said, "that's where the best research comes from, because the questions resonate with other people."

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You Think You're Taking Great Notes With Your Laptop, But You're Not

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Students do worse on quizzes when they use keyboards in class. Psych 101 was about to start, and Pam Mueller had forgotten her laptop at home. This meant more than lost Facebook time. A psychology grad student at Princeton, Mueller was one of the class teaching assistants.

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Getting students engaged through this flipped clas tool!

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We express ourselves in different ways. On Flip, you can use our simple and fun built-in camera to record your thoughts, add effects and share within your Flip group as video, audio only or text in your web browser or mobile app.

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Flip is a video discussion and sharing app, free from Microsoft.

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Flip (formerly Flipgrid) is a video discussion and video sharing app, free from Microsoft, built for classrooms and beyond. Learn more.

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A complete website for learning about English and French words. You can test your vocabulary level, then work on the words at the level where you are weak. Use wordlists, online concordancer and dictionaries, texts, and a database to store your work and view the work of others. French parallel site is slightly less complete.

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Com memes personalizados :)

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The evidence is in the practice

ESSA Level 3 correlation evidence in math and ELA, earned by teachers running frequent formative assessments.

When teachers run 30+ formative questions a week, the research is clear: they get more data-driven, their students get more engaged. Wayground is built to make that practice enjoyable ot run, attainable to fit a class period, and habitual enough to last past September.

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Quizizz is now Wayground | Teacher AI and Resources

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Find standards-aligned resources that engage every student. Wayground (formerly Quizizz) helps teachers differentiate instruction with AI and track student progress.

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Great for vocabulary activities!

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Sign in to your studystack account here by entering your username and password.

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Create your own learning tools!

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Website (and app) to play quizzes, make surveys, individual and group competitions, and make learning fun!

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Kahoot! | Learning games | Make learning awesome!

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Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform that brings engagement and fun to 1+ billion players every year at school, at work, and at home.