My students need engaging British Literature books that will (1) allow us to examine how popular culture serves as social commentary (2) incorporate media literacy; V for Vendetta and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
My students are learning to think critically about popular culture and how it serves as social commentary about broader issues such as poverty, inequality, and other challenges. They are taking this further by exploring how people engage with pop culture online thus exploring media literacy.
My students reside in a small rural town of just over 600 people.
The school is a close knit community where everyone knows each other. My students are in a high poverty area with many of them looking to go to college after graduation. I need engaging books to help them garner the critical thinking and media literacy skills they will need to not only finish high school but help them get to and succeed in college.
My Project
V for Vendetta by Alan Moore is a prime example of popular culture serving as social commentary in that it continues the conversation in Orwell's 1984 dystopia- allowing us to tie it into British literature tradition (we will discuss that during this unit). Comics engage students and utilize multiple forms of literacy including print and visual literacy. We will be able to tie into larger media (such as the film) and current events (such as how protesters around the world utilize iconography from Moore's V for Vendetta comic).
Shakespeare in comic book form grants students better access to his work by giving them visuals to help them understand his language. It engages multiple forms of literacy and presents Shakespeare in a way that they can relate to and get excited about. We will examine how Shakespeare has endured and continues to be adapted into different forms (such as this comic book). We will also discuss how this comic book adaptation impacts our reading of this play.
Many of the students have not traveled outside of our county, thus are lacking in experiences to relate to characters in fictional texts.
Graphic novels (comics) help aid this by providing rich visuals to aid the students immersion into the story world and characters journey. Incorporating comics and tying it with related online content gives the students opportunities to engage with media literacy- an experience that would otherwise be limited or nonexistent at home.
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