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Concepts ofPrint and

Genre

Authored by Nell K. Duke for TE 301With modifications by Meagan K.

Shedd

Summer 2009

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Genre Traditionally the term genre has referred totype or form of artistic expression. Peoplewould talk about different artistic genres,different musical genres, different literary

genres, and so on. The focus tended to be oncommon features among texts of a particulargenre.

More recently, discussions of genre emphasizerecurring social contexts that give rise to the

need for particular types of text. Genre is seenas defined primarily by the purpose of a text,with the features of the text following from itspurpose.

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Genre There are many different social contexts and

purposes for text. And thus there are manydifferent text genres.

Consider a trip to the grocery store. We seetext used to: signal (e.g., signs indicating sections of the store)

label (e.g., labels on food products)

advertise (e.g., the weekly circular)

inform (e.g., nutrition labels on products) advertise and entitle (e.g., as with coupons)

and more

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Genres at Home and at School

Children encounter many genres athome, and many genres at school.

FromDuk

e&Purcell-Gates,2003

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Importance of Genre Success in school and beyond requires theability to understand and to write particulargenres, such as personal narrative text andnonfiction informational text.

Just because a child is knowledgeable about onegenre does not mean he/she is knowledgeableabout another.

Instruction in one genre does not necessarily

transfer to another. Thus, we need to be recognize genre

development as an important aspect of literacydevelopment.

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Genre Development Written genre development can begin

very early.

A Shopping List and A Story

Hannah, Age 3, from Harste, Woodward, & Burke, 1984, p. 157

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Birthday List, Letter, Map, Story Page by Stephanie, priorto first grade,from Harste, Woodward, and Burke, 1984, p. 84

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Genre Development Assuming exposure and/or instruction, children

develop more sophisticated understandings of andknowledge about specific genres over time.

With unfamiliar genres, children may demonstrategenre confusion. For example:

I once had a child pretend to read a how to text (e.g.,about how to do an experiment) as a story.

Another time I had a child who was asked to pretendto read an information book ask me Can I say Once

upon a time? It is agreed, though, that young children can

handle a wide range of genres if given exposure tothem.

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Genre in Dramatic Play Dramatic play is one context in which

teachers may try to develop genre

knowledge. In the following slides are some genres

you might find with particular dramaticplay themes.

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10/1810From Bennett-Armistead, Duke, & Moses, 2005

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From Bennett-Armistead, Duke, & Moses, 2005

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From Bennett-Armistead, Duke, & Moses, 2005

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The Genre Diet Children are offered disproportionately

little exposure to genres beyond

narrative texts (Duke, 2000;Kamberelis, 1998)

Researchers call for genrediversification (Duke, 2007)

1/3 Narrative 1/3 Informational

1/3 other

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Genre Selection 450 books from childrens section of

the library, coded based on genre

Narrative

Informational

Other

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Narrative Narrative text included books with the key

elements of characters, settings (placeand time), problems, events, and solutions

(Baumann & Bergeron, 1993). This category included wordless picture

books that met these criteria usingillustrations or photographs, traditionalnarratives or storybooks, mysteries,

narrative books with a pattern, historicalfiction, folktales, fairytales, and myths,and books based on popular media.

Of the 440 books, 317 books were codedin this category, or 72.05%.

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Informational Informational text consisted of texts that werewritten with the primary purpose of conveyinginformation about the natural and social world,typically from someone presumed to be more

knowledgeable on the subject to someonepresumed to be less so (Duke, 2003).

This category included expository text, proceduraltext, persuasive text, concept books, and wordlesspicture books that used lifelike illustrations orphotographs for which meaning did not depend

upon chronology. Of the 440 total books coded, 59 books, or 13.41%

were in the informational category.

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Other The Other category encompassed all text typesthat do not meet the criteria for informational ornarrative texts.

This category includes poetry, songbooks, booksthat are based on or are nursery rhymes, graphicnovels, activity books, biographies,autobiographies, and books that did not fit into anyof the genre sub-categories within this category orthe narrative or informational categories. TheOther category also included any book that was a

hybrid of more than one genre if there was not agenre that was clearly dominant.

Within this category, 64 books of the 440 totalbooks were coded as Other, or 14.55% of the totalsample.

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Putting it all in Action Centers

Concepts of Print Assessment

Genre Definitions

Genre Sorting

Home Genres

Book Bag Genres

Field Notes Tradeoff