Student Audience. Describe your students. Include general characteristics, class size, grade level, and the instructional setting. What entry skills do students have in terms of information literacy? What experiences do they possess? What are their attitudes and interests? What motivates them? How does this impact your approach? How will you connect this learning experience to the real world?
The students of Whiteland Community High School, a rural school of 1500 students with approximately 33% diversity, who have the opportunity to elect to take comics as an English elective. The majority of the students in Mr. Clawson's classrooms are seniors. It is a one semester course. The class size is approximately 28-30 students. He has two classes of Comics.
Seniors, as a whole generally choose electives of interest to them, therefore the students will already have an interest in comics or graphic novels. Jerome Bruner said 'Ideally', interest in the material to be learned is the best stimulus to learning, rather than such external goals as grades or later competitive advantage'. Their attitude should be positive and motivated to learn as much as possible about something they already enjoy reading. They also possess or should have possessed the most experience with information retrieval and literacy skills since the majority would take this course as a senior. This will help with their understanding of how graphic novels can be used to explore and feel emotion with regard to the past that each historical graphic novel or comic portrays. It is relevant to the students because historical events have affected each of us in one way or another that brings with it real world relevance. "Learners should find the entire experience, including their final project, relevant to the whole world." (Blue Book, p.286)
The unit will be facilitated by Mrs. Snyder (Media Specialist) and Mr. Clawson (Language Arts instructor). We hope to point out that graphic novels can be used in a variety of different ways throughout the semester. Our first unit will be an introduction to graphic novels and connecting graphic novels with historical events.
The book for this unit students will read is The Complete Story of Maus: I and II by Art Speigelman. |