Teaching Students About the Genre of Thegwrjarticle

Teaching Students about the Genre of theGWRJArticle

Shannon Harman

Associate Editor

Resources for class discussions:

After your students have read a number of GWRJ articles and have a sense of the conventions of a GWRJ article, you can pose the following questions to them to get them thinking critically about the GWRJ:

1. How is this a “cohesive” genre if all the articles are so different?

2. What are the common conventions of the Grassroots article?

For this question, it may be helpful to differentiate between conventions that are common to all articles and necessary in order to get published in the GWRJ (like a bio, an abstract, headers, and so) and conventions that frequently appear, but are not necessary inclusions in an article in order for it to be published (like images, footnotes, and so on).
It may also be beneficial for students to look through articles available in previous issues of the GWRJ. All back issues are available at

3. Is this a meta-genre with sub-genres? Can you categorize articles into specific sub-genre types?

4. What’s unique about this genre as one that is submitted to and evaluated by a group of editors with specific expectations, especially knowing that editors have editorial privileges?

It may be necessary to walk students through the editorial process for the GWRJ. Editors are also available to come talk with students about the GWRJ and the editorial process, though we ask that instructors ask for a class visit at least two weeks in advance of the date of the class in which they would like the editors to speak. Class visits can be arranged by contacting the GWRJ Associate Editor, Shannon Harman, at .

Sample activities:

There are a number of activities that instructors in our program do to help students understand the GWRJ as a genre while also exploring different literate activities. The following are some examples of activities that our instructors have found helpful.

1. When you assign a GWRJ article for students to read, ask them to code for conventions. This can be as simple as having students physically highlight unique and/or important features of an article they read, or as complex as having them produce some sort of write-up listing important conventions and explaining why the purpose of the conventions and why they matter.

Many instructors also find it helpful to hold a class discussion on the day the reading is due in which students share the conventions they highlighted. This way, the whole class can build a list of conventions they found important as a group.

2. Ask students to read some of our more unique articles and to identify the ways in which those articles adhere to the standard conventions of the GWRJ as a genre and also ways in which those articles break from the conventions of a standard GWRJ article. The following are some articles from past issues of the GWRJ that are useful for this activity:

“We wrote an unpublishable article (that you can still read)” by Scott Pyrz and Thaddeus Stoklasa, Issue 5.2, Spring 2015.
“Angela Rides the Bus” by Angela Sheets, Issue 5.1, Fall 2014.

Last updated December 2017