In the school system in Brazil, reading comprehension is an important objective. In the teaching-learning process, this skill has been identified closely with the notion that the learner appropriates genres from the teaching materials used in the classroom. In a number of school situations, the lack of an appropriate course book has led to the use of teacher-generated materials, which often include genres. The decisions concerning the use of genres in these materials depend largely on the view that the materials author has about the learners and about the nature of the teaching-learning process. The aim of this study is to investigate a series of teacher-generated materials for the teaching of reading in English (EFL) for third-year high school students in a public school. The study focuses on genres and more specifically on the newspaper article, which is the most recurrent genre in the material. The study attempts to identify how the concept of genres is treated by the author and what the role of genres is in the teaching process, as he sees it. For this purpose, I review the literature on genres, in particular, the work of Dolz and Schneuwly (2004), and the literature on reading for specific purposes. The study concentrates on the prompts that introduce each task, since they might show whether the author wants to highlight content, structure, or other aspects of genre. The method used in the research is in two parts. One is the analysis of the content (Ramos, 2004), the format of the materials, and the prompts. The second part is two interviews with the author, concerning the process of designing the material, the teaching objectives, the method, and the author’s view of genre as a guide for materials design. From the analysis of the interviews, the notion of genre is seen as having a complementary role in ESP teaching. From the analysis of the materials, there is an emphasis on the detail phase of Ramos’ (2004) model. However, the application phase (Ramos, 2004), where the learner would be able to appropriate the genre, is rarely included.