Like we did with Time Travel, we’ll focus our Alien work towards 3 outcomes:
- Reading a book (with an in-class reading reflection)
- Writing a story (“5-pager” this time)
- Creating a Group Presentation
Due Dates for Alien Unit:
Tuesday, November 15th: IN CLASS written reflection on your book. Bring the book with you and be prepared to explain how the alien theme is represented, provide text support for your ideas, discuss the author’s intent/choices.
Thursday, November 17th: Group Presentations. Provide an “alien” experience for the class.
Monday, November 21st: 5-page alien stories due. 1.5 spacing, standard margins, 12 pt font. Please make me the 3rd reader for your story.
What we’ll do in class between now and then:
(various days): classes in which we process the idea of “Alien” in various engaging ways. We’ll get your groups planning and your stories started.
November 1,3, and 8: 3 classes for our Personal Essay Mini-Unit. We’ll take a brief departure from our Alien work to write some of the best work of your life!
November 15-21: 2-3 classes to wrap up our Alien work: Reading Reflection and Presentations.
Writing Help:
Although we typically don’t look at it until second semester, the Hero’s Journey (see below) may help you extend the plot of your story and reach the 5-page threshold.
A quick reminder of “The Hero’s Journey”, which might be useful if you’re trying to extend your alien story. Use any/all of these bullet points to inspire your story writing. For more detail, see the link below.
DEPARTURE
- Call to Adventure
- Refusal of the Call
- Supernatural aid/event
- Crossing the Threshold
- The Belly of the Whale
INITIATION
- The Road of Trials
- Meeting the Supernatural
- Confronting Issues
- Defying Death
- Winning!
RETURN
- Refual of the Return
- Escape from Winning!
- Rescue from Without
- Return to the Threshold
- Master of Two Worlds
- Free to Live!
Here’s a bit more detail (with some slightly different titles):
Levine's SciFi English 