Narrative Knowing

Romano uses the term "narrative knowing" in his text about creating multi-genre presentations. I thought that this brought up an interesting point, and helped frame the argument for the use of multi-genre in the English Language Arts classroom.

Although expository writing is a necessary skill, and a very useful tool, it does not say everything for everyone. I think that this is where narrative knowing comes in. There are students who can read and understand an encyclopedia entry about a topic. And then there are the students for whom there must be a personal story or connection in order for the information to have meaning for them. In this situation, these students need some other way to obtain the information. A multi-genre project can fill a void that previously existed in the classroom for these students. Also, it can help the lovers of the straight-forward to stretch and try on a few new things. I am very interested in the idea of narrative knowing, and how that can help students, and teacher, in the classroom.

One resource I have come across this week is the homework helper at the Minneapolis Public Library's website. The address is www.mplib.org/homeworkhelper.asp. This site is a great resource for students to use when they are doing homework. However, it also has a lot of information that could be useful to teachers. First, it offers teachers a few areas that students often struggle with. When teaching something for the first time, teachers may not anticipate what students will get and what they will have trouble with. This site shows teachers some common problem areas. Also, it provides teachers with another way of looking at the information. Sometimes it can be difficult to come up with a way of presenting information so students will grasp the material. This site offers one more way of thinking about the information.