This page will be used to house tools that the students will use throughout the Unit Plan. Although we did not develop them for this project, we have provided a description of the proposed tools below.
Phase 1: Social Justice / Civic Engagement Research
In Phase 1, students will be asked to research a civic engagement issue they are interested in, provide a summary of its impact on them and/or their community, and propose 1-3 potential solutions for addressing it. Unit coaches would provide a graphic organizer to support this process.
Phase 2: How do you create a graphic novel?
In Phase 2, students are asked to analyze 2-3 graphic novels and identify a short list of 3-5 elements that they believe are important to creating a successful graphic novel. This sort of brainstorming activity could be done on a shared Google Slide deck or in a whiteboard app built into Zoom. Unit coaches may provide a simple visual structure to help anchor the students thinking.
Phase 3: What makes a good graphic novel?
In Phase 3, students will use a whiteboarding app to brainstorm as a group and agree upon a final rubric for assessing the quality of the graphic novels developed in Phase 4. Unit coaches will use the results of this brainstorming session to create a rubric to guide students' work in Phase 4.
Phase 4: Create your graphic novel
In Phase 4, unit coaches will provide students with a copy of the rubric from Phase 3. Students will also be provided with graphic organizers to help them create characters, plot their storylines, and storyboard a short graphic novel consisting of 5-10 pages.
Phase 5: Peer Review
In Phase 5, the groups will be reshuffled. Students will present their graphic novel to their new group for peer review and feedback, based on the rubric the class developed in Phase 3. Unit coaches may choose to provide students with a simple list of questions to guide the type of feedback they give their classmates.
The Big Think: Reflection & Interact with an Expert
In the Big Think the students will be asked to reflect on their learning experience. What went well? What would they do differently next time? What are they still curious about? Did they learn anything that surprised them? If they could interview an author of a graphic novel, what questions would they want to ask them? Unit coaches may choose to provide a simple graphic organizer to guide this reflection exercise.
If the unit coaches are able to arrange an author visit, the questions from these student reflections may be provided to the visiting author in advance of their visit.