On Monday and Tuesday, students finished reading MAUS and completing reading guides. If you have not yet had a chance to read the entire book, either come in on Friday during lunch or send me an email and I’ll send you a PDF to be working at home.

In the meantime, homework is to be working on your final version of your hero comic book (due on Monday). Please make sure that you are making a bit of progress on this every day, as it is a large project and will be difficult to complete at the very last minute. I’ve placed stapled booklets on the wooden table at the front of the classroom if you need a new one.

I will be out unexpectedly tomorrow (Friday). Students – please sign in and pick up your papers as usual. You will have the whole day to work on your MAUS reading guides – please put them in the stacks on my desk when you’re done. You will also pick up a packet of three sheets of blank paper, stapled in the middle. Fold them in half and you’ll have a blank booklet for your comic book. Your homework over the weekend (due on Tuesday, not Monday) will be do a ROUGH DRAFT of your comic book in the booklet. It doesn’t have to be fancy or in color, I just want you to get a sense of how things will look, what space you need, how you can experiment with different kinds of panels, etc. I will give you a second blank booklet for your final copy.

I hope that it is a good, productive day tomorrow!

We have continued to work on reading MAUS during class time (reading guides are available in class). Students should be working on their comic books at home for homework. By the start of class on Friday, you should know:

• whom your character will be – what he or she looks like, his or her personality, motivations, and history, etc.
• the world your character will inhabit – both the ordinary and the extraordinary
• the plot as it moves through the first five steps of the Hero’s Cycle

Also, as a supplement to MAUS, here are a few Crash Course videos:

We started our next major work, MAUS, in class today! We discussed both graphic novels and World War II as a warm up. Over the next week, students will be reading the book and completing reading guides IN CLASS (not at home). Your homework for this week, then, is to be working on your comic book project: Comic Book Project. This project is due on April 20 – I emphasized the importance of working on it bit by bit instead of waiting until the last minute. Tonight, I asked students to begin thinking about their heroes/main characters for their comic books.

Today we continued to work on our Dracula essays. Please have them printed and ready to go for tomorrow!

Also, we’re beginning our unit on graphic novels. Check out this great webcomic as a preview!

I’m sorry for the late post!

We finished up viewing and discussing the humor in Dracula: Dead and Loving It. To close up our Dracula unit, students need to complete their literary criticism essays. Dracula Critical Essay Assignment Page

I gave out another sheet to help you with developing that essay: scaffolding for lit crit essay

That essay will be due on Tuesday, April 7. I’m giving you all of class time on Monday to complete it.