From what we know of students in the 9th Grade, it’s pretty obvious that they would be excited to read a graphic novel instead of the normal books or poetry they would be accustomed to. Granted this may mean they may not take it as seriously, but with guidance, this initial enthusiasm can be carried through to engage a proper level of appreciation for the genre and the individual novel, American Born Chinese. It is pretty much guaranteed that students will have read comics before, and may have even seen/read graphic novels prior to this assignment. Therefore, engaging students’ prior knowledge should be an easy task. All the same, we have a day allotted towards introducing the genre, explaining its origins, giving examples of famous graphic novels they may have already seen, etc. As stated in the lesson plan for Day 1, this will be executed through a multi-modal PowerPoint presentation and physical examples of the noted books. This way, students get a hands-on activation of interest, previous knowledge, and further understanding of the genre they are about to study for the next 4 weeks.
Following this initial intro day, we will devote a day to addressing the stereotypes presented in the novel. In this novel, this author uses stereotypes liberally to both provide humorous parody and a point on the struggles of Chinese-Americans. Though we have some Asian-American students in the class, not everyone present may be familiar with these topics and issues. Students may have difficulty with understanding this, so to guide them effectively we will show them clips from YouTube and other images to solidify their understanding of the issues at hand. It is our hope and understanding that by using such multimedia, students will remain engaged with the lesson that would otherwise be difficult, tedious, and possibly offensive. But once this understanding is attained, students should have a much clearer perception on the use of these stereotypes within the novel itself and how its use impacts the meanings and developments therein.
After this, we will have established sufficient background to begin the novel itself. We will spend a period introducing the novel. Students will be given individual copies of the book to be kept in the class, as all reading for the class will be done while class is in session. This will cut down the homework for this class to zero, and therefore ensure that all students are always on the same page. Also by doing the reading in class, we can better ensure that students are following along and understanding the content as we go along.
The next day we will continue in the same fashion for the second section of the novel, introducing new characters and the second plot thread. This will be slightly difficult as it will require tying in some of the concepts concerning Chinese Americans into the text and encouraging students to identify the relationship between the background we gave earlier in the week and the actual actions of the story. However, given the level of direct engagement used to provide this background combined with guided, in class reading, there should be no problem fostering discussion in class concerning how this impacts the characters and themes. Without including actual worksheets and busywork, the classroom will remain active, keeping the students interested in the content.
After all of this, on Friday of the first week, we will start work on the framework of the students’ final project. The students will be introduced to the online program of Comic Life, which allows students to create, page by page, their own narrative comics. This should generate a great deal of enthusiasm from students – after all, who doesn’t want to make comic strips? We will have to drive home the fact that these comics, like the novel, are supposed to be taken seriously, and will count for a final grade. The comic will reflect the novel in thematic structure, in that it will need to circle a story based on struggles of personal or cultural identity. With such an ethnically diverse classroom, this should not be a difficult task for students to imagine, as they will most likely all have faced some amount of challenges in this regard. The only real difficulty we might face as the teacher is a resistance to opening up about these challenges instead of treating the assignment like a joke. Students may wish to avoid this personal subject, but with proper encouragement, we can more than likely get students to open up and be creative with this project.
To further engage students with technology in this unit, we also plan to allow each Monday of the unit for blogging time. The Blogger we have set up contains the examples of the assignments students will complete on the blog. Basically, students will be allowed the entire period to write responses to the prompts as well as their own reactions to the readings thus far. After doing so, they must also respond to at least two of their classmates’ posts. This guided writing ultimately should have the same outcome as the guided reading; students will work together to enhance their understanding of the text, and use critical thinking skills to answer the questions appropriately and insightfully. Since it utilizes familiar and easy to use technology, students will be more enthusiastic to perform the task than if it were in class writing by hand. This will also allow students to review the text they have already read, and be sure that, after the weekend, they haven’t forgotten any of the material.
The rest of the weeks will follow this same pattern – Monday blogging, Tuesday-Thursday reading, and Friday comic work. This will allow students a certain level of comfort by creating a routine pattern, but still remain variant enough that students will not become bored with the unit. In the end, this method of varied and multi-modal instruction will keep students engaged with the actual text and the genre. It will allow students to exercise their writing and critical thinking skills while also being creative and self expressive. In essence, it not only teaches a new genre, but also touches on all the important elements of basic instruction.
