Thursday, May 21, 2009

Perspolis Final Project

Persepolis Final Project

Phew! You are almost done for the school year! Just a little bit more until you can enjoy a couple of months of relaxation during your summer vacation… make sure you work hard in these last two weeks so you have earned your break and so you can go into that summer with your head held high!

You have two more at-home assignments this year: your Persepolis Project and your Final Exam Review sheet. You’ll get your review sheet next week, and it will be due on Thursday. Your final project will be due on Friday (no later). You must turn it in (hard copy only) with the MYP Rubric attached.

Options for Persepolis Project
1. Being Marjane Satrapi: Write your own graphic novel!
This is the one that I hope a lot of you are brave enough to do! Marjane Satrapi wrote a graphic novel about her childhood. It is humorous, dramatic, and imaginative, and divided into short 8-10 page chapters (with titles). Your job is to write your own graphic novel chapter about your own childhood. You may imitate Satrapi’s style or create your own. Artistic talent does not count, but I do not want stick figures. Caption quality does count. You will include a title for your chapter, and use elements of the graphic novel that we have studied. Lastly, you must include a brief ‘Statement of Intent’ that explains the choices you made while creating your graphic novel – use graphic novel vocabulary.

2. Rewriting Persepolis: Create a non-graphic novel out of a graphic novel
For this assignment, you will take a chapter of Persepolis and re-write it in ‘regular’, non-graphic prose. Remember, you cannot just write what everyone says, but also describe everything in the pictures. It might take several pages to capture all the meaning! Afterwards, write a few paragraphs about what you noticed while re-writing Persepolis – what were the advantages and disadvantages of writing it out versus viewing the pictures as well as the words?

3. Rewriting a novel as a graphic novel
Choose a short section of something else we have read this year (summer reading books, Mockingbird, Romeo and Juliet, Odyssey, Fences, “Marigolds”, Lesson Before Dying, “The Scarlet Ibis”, etc.) and re-write it in graphic novel form. Afterwards, write a few paragraphs that analyzes how the meaning changes when you write it in a different form.

4. Persepolis graphic analysis
Choose five pages of Persepolis from which to analyze all the choices Satrapi makes in those pages. Using graphic novel vocabulary, analyze each of the panels within your chosen pages for the meanings and themes that Satrapi is attempting to express. This project should 3 pages (typed) of analysis, with copies of the pages you analyze attached and text-marked.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, great project. Can I submit my own assignment for credit. I like all of the options. They leave room for a lot of creativity, yet still with the literary analysis. I think I can adapt the same ideas for the elementary class that I teach, using comic books / cartoons instead of graphic novels. Definitely all valid forms of storytelling. Rock on!

Magical Mystical Teacher said...

Well, sir, I was all excited about writing a graphic novel until I saw that you would not accept stick figures--and then my heart plummeted into the very deepest depths of despair. O woe is me!

Unknown said...

Love, love, love this book! I read it last fall, and I'm getting ready to review it with some of my coworkers as our bookclub selection. Great choice.

Anonymous said...

Haven't checked on here lately, so this is a "late" comment, but my - what a gift you gave your students to have them read Persepolis! Now they can watch what is going on in Iran with the rigged election and actually know some of the history behind Iran's revolution (which puts them several steps ahead of CNN). Did you choose Persepolis in part because of the increasing importance of Iran in world politics? (Or just 'cuz it's awesome? :)) In any case, fantastic choice.