Fantastic Characters: Analyzing and Creating Superheroes and Villains

Lesson Plans

Student Interactives

Professional Library

Activities & Projects

Podcast Episodes

 

LESSON PLANS

Grades   6 – 12  |  Lesson Plan  |  Unit

Twenty-First Century Informational Literacy: Integrating Research Techniques and Technology

Students develop their reading, writing, research, and technology skills using graphic novels. As a final activity, students create their own graphic novels using comic software.

 

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Comics in the Classroom as an Introduction to Genre Study

Multidimensional, challenging, and popular with students, comics provide an excellent way to introduce the concept of genres.

 

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Is Superman Really All That Super? Critically Exploring Superheroes

What makes a superhero super? By comparing popular culture superheroes with heroic characters in children’s literature, students learn to think critically about character traits, and consider how cultural perspectives influence the kinds of heroes we choose.

 

Grades   9 – 12  |  Lesson Plan  |  Unit

Tracking the Ways Writers Develop Heroes and Villains

Everyone knows that Star Wars character Darth Vader is a villain. This lesson asks students to explore how they know such things about heroes and villains they encounter in texts.

 

Grades   9 – 12  |  Lesson Plan  |  Unit

Heroes Are Made of This: Studying the Character of Heroes

Designed to explore the hero and the heroic in literature, this unit asks students to discuss their ideas of heroism and analyze heroes in literature.

 

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STUDENT INTERACTIVES

Grades   6 – 12  |  Student Interactive  |  Inquiry & Analysis

Hero’s Journey

Students can use this tool to learn about the elements of the hero's journey, analyze a text that follows the hero's journey pattern, or start creating a hero story of their own.

 

Grades   3 – 12  |  Student Interactive  |  Organizing & Summarizing

Compare & Contrast Map

The Compare & Contrast Map is an interactive graphic organizer that enables students to organize and outline their ideas for different kinds of comparison essays.

 

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PROFESSIONAL LIBRARY

Grades   7 – 12  |  Professional Library  |  Book

Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels: Page by Page, Panel by Panel

This collection of essays by classroom teachers demonstrates how to pair graphic novels with classic literature (including both canonical and YA lit).

 

Professional Library  |  Journal

How Comic Books Can Change the Way Our Students See Literature: One Teacher's Perspective

In this article, Versaci details the many merits of using comics and graphic novels in the classroom, suggests how they can be integrated into historical and social issues units, and recommends several titles.

 

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ACTIVITIES & PROJECTS

Grades   6 – 8  |  Activity & Project

Comics and Graphic Novels

Instead of creating traditional book reports or writing summaries, get “graphic” by creating a comic book or cartoon adaptation of the major scenes from the books.

 

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PODCAST EPISODES

Grades   6 – 12  |  Podcast Episode

An Introduction to Graphic Novels

Tune in to hear some background about graphic novels as well as specific recommendations of fantasy epics, memoirs, biographies, and adventure thriller stories, all presented in the form of a graphic novel.

 

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