Kathryn+Eller

Kat Eller ENGL 409 Professor Tucker 1/21/11

**Kat Eller**

**Planning Intertextual Studies: The Hero's Journey**

**Course:** English Literature/Language Arts, 10th grade

**Unit**: The Hero in All of Us

**Texts:**

//Graceling// by Kristin Cashore

Disney-Pixar's “Shrek”

Heracles myth, Persephone myth

**Form of Intertextual Study:** Thematic

**Purpose:**

To help students understand the hero's journey in literature.

To help students understand the presence of society's judgments in our daily lives.

To help students understand the importance of setting and characterization in literature.

**Essential Questions:**

What is a hero?

How much of a role does society play in our self-image?

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">How does the setting of a piece of literature effect the way it is read?

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">How am I a hero?

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">What am I good at?

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">**Unit Questions:**

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">How can I tell when someone is a hero?

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">How can I identify the hero's journey outside of class texts?

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">What makes a man/woman?

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">What happens when someone does not follow the role that society assigns to them?

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">**Assessments:**

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">//Discussion:// Weekly content/theme/rhetorical analysis of the assigned reading, in-class, full-class. (Participation __**required**__)

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">//Formative:// Create a hero character and fill out a survey of basic information, then write a magazine interview.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">//Formative:// Using the above two assessments, fill out a chart/table showing your character's journey and how it aligns with the idea of the hero's journey.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">//Summative/Essay:// Write a 4-6 page story using the above assessments, 1 page reflection paper.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">//Reflective Writing:// Daily journals that encourage critical thinking about the text and about life in general.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">**Learning Activities:**

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">Students write daily reflections about prompts relating to the text.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">Students participate in in-depth, in-class discussions regarding the readings and lectures.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">Students create a world of their own and design maps showing major cities and leaders, then present them.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">__Day 1: Maps/Introduction to Setting__

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> The journal topic for today will be “If you were to create your own land like in // Graceling //, what would it look like? Draw a map to show the regions (if any), major cities, etc.” As on Day 2, this drawing aspect will help draw in more students who may not be feeling particularly engaged with the topic.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> IMPORTANT: This is not just a “fluff” content day. I will hand out a sheet of paper while the students are working. On this paper will be questions relating to Setting: Is this a modern place, or is it set in another time? What is the weather here? What are the citizens' beliefs? What language do the citizens speak? Is there anything special about this land? Are there any meaningful landmarks/natural resources/land formations/etc?” This will help get my students thinking about Monday's lesson, and it also gives them a basis for their culminating project.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> I will stop the students with about twenty minutes left in the class and have them explain to everyone (in one minute or less, which makes it sort of a game) what they've come up with. We don't need huge elaborate descriptions, just the basics.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> **Homework: Students will need to have read p. 1-126 by Day Four [Thursday]. Will recommend that they split it up throughout the week and read 30-40 pages per night. Also, in no more than one page of looseleaf, describe the setting of the land you designed, and what sorts of things would be different if you changed something about it.**

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">__Day 2: Setting__

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> Today I will split my students into groups of 5-6 and pass out one index card to each group. On this index card will be the synopsis of a well-known book, but with the setting changed and names removed. (The Harry Potter series, for example, suddenly takes place aboard a space station, and //Jane Eyre// in Queens, New York.) These groups will have five minutes to try to identify the novel and write down their guess, and after the five minutes is up, they switch cards with the next group. When the activity is finished, I will have one student from each group read their synopsis aloud and then tell them which book it is about. I expect there will be some level of indignation, which I can use to move into the teaching moment. What's wrong with each situation? Students will write things on the board (time period, location, etc), and we will have a working definition of setting, which we will then use as a lens through which to discuss //Graceling.//

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif; text-decoration: none;"> **Homework: Students should read the next 30-40 pages in the book, take notes about anything they find interesting and/or troubling: whatever they want to discuss in class. They must come up with 2-3 questions or thoughts about the text, to act as prompts for the discussion.**

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">__Day 3: Characterization__

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> Although characterization is different from setting, it does still rely on it, which is why these lessons are planned so close together. We will discuss the things that make characters different from each other, beyond simply their names. This will include the way things are described, whether a character seems “reliable,” and physical description.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> **Homework: Students should read up until page 126, as we will be talking about the readings in class tomorrow.**

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">__Day 4: //Graceling// Discussion__

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> Students will be given 5 minutes to write in their journals about the questions and/or thoughts that they came up with the night before. (This also allows the more forgetful students to come up with at least // something // to contribute.) Students will then spend this class period discussing the text, with little input from me. I am there only to help them look at things in a different light, to encourage them to delve deeper into the book.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> Two-Cent Method: Before class begins, I will place two pennies on each desk. These are there to serve as reminders to my students: they have two and only two chances to speak. (This is necessary in a class of roughly 30 students). This method keeps the more verbose students restrained a bit and encourages the more reticent ones to speak up. As the students speak, they should flip the penny over to the “tails” side. Once everyone has spoken, it becomes a “free-for-all” of sorts: there are no more restrictions.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif; text-decoration: none;"> **Homework: Students will need to read up to page 266 for next Thursday, so recommend that they start reading now (about 25 pages a night, if they read on the weekend too). Also,**

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> **they should make a list of people that they consider heroes. THIS DOES NOT MEAN**

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> // **THEIR OWN** // **HEROES: just people that might be considered such.**

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">__Day 5: What is a hero?__

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif; text-decoration: none;"> At the beginning of the class period, students will **pre-write** in their journals for five minutes, not about “what is a hero?” or “who is your hero?”, but about what sort of hero they would be. (This is more engaging and I am less likely to receive answers like “I don't have heroes because everyone lets you down.”) We will then move to a **class-discussion**. To start off, a few students may read what they have written, but this will not be required. After a few students have read, we will begin to brainstorm, as a class, qualities that we think heroes must have. (I expect that students will primarily focus on superheroes and list superpower.)

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> From there, I will segue into the first part of the Hero's Journey: the Departure. Students will not yet have a basis for this lecture in the anchor text, but it is prevalent in many aspects of pop culture today, so they will still have a way to examine the material. In class, we will discuss the Disney-Pixar film “Shrek” (I've chosen this film over newer ones because it has been my experience that students often have the opportunity to watch it in school, which helps to level the playing field in case there are students in my class who do not often go out to watch movies), and whether all of the aspects of Departure are present in the beginning of the movie.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> **Homework: Continue reading. They are to create a character who follows (at least loosely) the hero's journey and shares some of the qualities of a hero. There are questions on the sheet that will help them to create this character.**

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">__Day 6: What is a hero? (continued)__

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> We will move right into our lesson today, discussing the middle parts of the hero's journey: Initiation. These first three days, unfortunately, will be based largely on lecture: this is information that my students are just going to need to have, so they'll need to take notes, etc. (I will do my best to keep things engaging, using a PowerPoint for visual learners.) Once the basic information for the day has been disseminated, we will look once again at “Shrek” and the aspects of Initiation in his story. I will then have students break off into groups of three and have them discuss this step in other aspects of popular culture (television, movies, books, etc). This will last anywhere from 10-15 minutes, at which point we will come back together as a class and compare answers. (The point of this activity is to show students that not every Journey has every single step.)

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> After we have wrapped up our discussion, students will write in their journal about the prompt “If a big Hollywood director was to make a movie of your life, what would the tagline be?” I would also encourage my students to sketch out a very rough idea of what the movie's poster would look like—this is in order to engage the artistically-inclined students with the idea of the hero.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> **Homework: Read the next 25-35 pages of** //**Graceling,**// **also continue developing their characters.**

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">__Day 7: What is a hero? (continued)__

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> This is the final part of our Hero's Journey lectures. When I've finished the lecture, students will break into groups of 5 and make a list of questions that they still have about the whole thing. I will stress to them that, even if someone else in the group knows how to answer someone's question, they should still take note of it, since someone else might be wondering the same thing but not have someone else to answer it. When we reconvene, we will go around the room taking questions. I will have other students answer their classmates' questions.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> The journal activity today is “How does your favorite movie follow or deviate from the outline of the hero's journey we discussed in class?”

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> **Homework: I will recommend that students read 25-35 more pages in the book, and collect the character planning sheet. Students will have the opportunity (but will not be required) to present their character to the class and explain a bit about them.**

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">__Day 8: Gender__

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> Gender is a difficult subject for many people to talk about, let alone high schoolers, but Katsa versus Campbell's male hero provides an “in.” The first thing we will do in class is write for 3-4 minutes about what comes to mind when the students hear the word “male.” Immediately afterwards, we will do the same, but for “female.” Then I'll call on some students to share their thoughts, and although there are many enlightened people in the world today (including students), I do expect to get many stereotypical answers. This will allow us to move into the discussion about gender.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> I will gather a few readings into a packet for this class, with short essays about gender/sex and biographies of people who break gender norms. Eventually we will reconcile the tension between // Graceling // and Campbell, and ideally will come to the conclusion that, at least for the purposes of this class, gender has little to no meaning.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> **Homework: Students should read up until page 226, as we will be talking about the readings in class tomorrow. They must come up with 2-3 questions or thoughts about the text, to act as prompts for the discussion.**

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> **Also, examine settings and gender and characters on television and in any movies they watch over the weekend, and think about characters' good qualities and their “bad” qualities and how they are portrayed, and where they live and how things work there. This isn't a paper or anything: just an exercise for the mind. Now that my students have directly learned about these things, I think it would be hard for them not to think about them, even a little, during other activities.**

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">__Day 9: //Graceling// Discussion__

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> This class will be run similarly to Day 4. Students will be given 5 minutes to write in their journals about the questions and/or thoughts that they came up with the night before. (This also allows the more forgetful students to come up with at least // something // to contribute.) Students will then spend this class period discussing the text, with little input from me. I am there only to help them look at things in a different light, to encourage them to delve deeper into the book.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> Assuming it worked out well on Day 4, I would use the Two-Cent Method again, and we would have a class discussion of the material. I would encourage my students to analyze the setting and the characters, since we had just finished talking about those things.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> A few minutes before the end of class, I would introduce tomorrow's assignment: trading cards. I would pass out one baseball card to each of my students, to keep and look at, and tell them to be thinking about the information on their character sheets and what would be included on that character's trading card. (I would also like to have some examples of other character-cards, even if I have to make them up myself, which is definitely likely in the first year.)

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif; text-decoration: none;"> **Homework: Students will need to read up to page 425 for next Thursday, so recommend that they start reading now (about 26 pages a night, if they read on the weekend too). The magazine interviews will be due tomorrow.**

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;">__Day 10: Characterization, Setting, Heroes, Magazine Interviews__

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> I would take a few minutes in the beginning of class to have students write about what their Grace would be. It is only tangentially related to the lesson today, but it's still fun to think about.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> Then we would move into the magazine assignment. presentation. Students would be able to read their interviews aloud, either acting out both parts, or getting a classmate or me to read the questions while they respond/act like their character. I'd really like for all of the students to do this, instead of just volunteers, because it's important for everyone to become familiar with their character (for the culminating project)

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif;"> **Homework: Read a lot!**

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Summative Assessment

“<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Write Your Own Hero Story”

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Now that we have finished our study on the hero's journey, it's your turn!

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">You will be writing a **4-6 page story** (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, in 12 point <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-weight: normal;">Times New Roman or <span style="font-family: Garamond,serif; font-weight: normal;">Garamond font) detailing the journey of your own hero character—the one that you've been working with for the past month.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Your Story Should:
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Be 4-6 pages long, double-spaced.
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Roughly follow the __ hero's journey. __
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">It is not required that you include every step.
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> (Remember the stories we've talked about that do not follow the journey exactly)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Include some of the __ characterization and setting __ from your interviews.
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Refer to your notes, classmates, or myself if you get stuck or confused.
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> (We will have several Writing Workshop days where others will read your drafts and help you.)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Be free of typos and grammatical errors.
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Read your story aloud to yourself before handing it in.
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Do your sentences “flow”?
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Have you made careless errors like typos or omitted words?
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Run Spell check, but do not count on it to catch every mistake.
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Does your story make sense?
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Have you had at least two other people read through your story?
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Finish early, so you can let your story simmer for a day or two before rereading it.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">When you have finished, you will need to write a ¾ to 1-page reflection paper (single-spaced) telling me what you have learned while writing this story. Talk about what steps you included in your story and what else makes it a hero's quest. If you've deviated from the steps outlined in class (which is fine, even encouraged!), explain why you've done so. What was the hardest part about writing this? What was the most fun? What would you do differently if you were to write it again?

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">For extra credit (1-5 points*), you may work a moral/theme beyond “heroes” into your story, and/or address the idea of gender.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">*Please note that you will not receive extra credit for these inclusions

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">if your story does not meet the required criteria above.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-style: normal;"> This assignment will be worth **20 points** and will be due on