Throughout the year, you will learn that writing is more than completing assignments; it is a tool for thinking, learning, communicating, and creating change. During this course, you will investigate meaningful questions, create for authentic audiences, and educate your teacher and your peers, publish work you can be proud of, and answer the question: What is universally human?

Write with purpose by creating engaging pieces that inform, persuade, entertain, and inspire a variety of audiences.

Investigate meaningful questions by researching topics, evaluating evidence, and thinking critically about information from multiple sources.

Grow through the writing process by planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing polished work using feedback from others.

Communicate ideas effectively by collaborating with others, participating in discussions, and presenting writing and creative work with confidence.

Use writing and reading to understand yourself and the world by exploring personal experiences, historical events, global issues, works of long-form fiction, and topics you are passionate about.

Exercise critical reading practices to better understand the perspectives, events, and themes/big ideas that make up the stories we explore. 

Become confident, competent writers by learning and practicing the rules of grammar, utilizing the classroom dictionaries, and supporting your peers to do the same by providing them with your readerly feedback.

Essential Question: Does representation matter? Why or why not?

We will begin the year with a gallery walk of various zines from this website: https://www.cartermuseum.org/blog/short-history-zines. Students will participate in identity-making activities, such as mind-maps, before diving in and creating zines that represent their identities. 

Alongside our work on those personal identity zines, we will read Chinua Achebe’s fictional novel titled Things Fall Apart. We will begin this work by watching The Dangers of a Single Story, a TED Talk given by author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Then, we will read. On Fridays, table groups will work on their 7-page character zine, which will use a motif to show the point-of-view of a character from the novel, and then they will create individual artist’s statements explaining the importance and meaning of their motif. There will be grammar mini-lessons as well. 

Finally, table-groups will present their character zines to the class. The goal of this presentation is to deepen your classmates’ understanding of your character. 

To students: if any of this language, such as the word “motif,” is unfamiliar to you, don’t worry; you will learn! I will be here to teach, to help, and to encourage you on every step of the way, and your peers will be taught to do the same. You will never be alone in your learning.

Things Fall Apart Overview and Forewarnings

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe takes place in a fictional Igbo village in Nigeria during the 1890s. It is set right at the beginning of British Colonization, and follows a man named Okonkwo, as well as members of his family. When Achebe began to write, his express goal was to found an African canon of stories. Alongside our discussion of the story itself, we will ask ourselves why Achebe took on that goal. Why is it important to have an African Canon of literature? What do we learn about humanity when we read stories about people and places that are foreign to us? How do we feel when we read stories that we feel represented by?

As a forewarning, Things Fall Apart contains violence, though none of it is especially vivid. Some characters die; others are injured. There is also one chapter that contains a brief mention of sexual content. That moment in the text will not be the focus of our lessons, and I will not ask students to write about it. Students will be expected to approach these events with maturity. Speaking to parents: if you would prefer that your child not read the page that contains the mention of sexual behavior, reach out and I will ensure that that page is censored for your child.

Major Projects

• Read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

• Personal Identity Zine

• Character Zine Group Project

• In-Class Presentation

Who We Are
Our personal and character zines will be available for the community to view during Kreiva’s first exhibition!