Weekly Agenda: November 14-18

Tuesday, November 15
Partner Work:
Read and discuss excerpts from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (handout)
- determine purpose and message for each vignette
- highlight use of conventions for each
- summarize setting & locate vivid and/or sensory description
Share/discuss
In-class Journal Prompt: We have discussed how protagonists can be drawn into a fantasy story’s quest in a number of ways – and not always willingly. Write only the beginning scene of a potentially much larger fantasy story, introducing the protagonist, the quest, and how he/she is drawn into the journey. The hero can be daring, reluctant, antiheroic, or something else entirely. Focuses for this prompt should be on characterization and world-building.
HW:
1st Period: Read “The Dome” (handout). Write a ½ page discussing fantasy conventions used, whether obvious or subtle. What in this story seems fantastic (in other words, stretches or defies believability, and asks us to suspend our disbelief)? What moral or message does the writer seem to be getting at through the spin on our world that he creates?
2nd Period: Finish prompt.


Thursday, November 17
Discuss homework reading and story conventions
Read and discuss prologue from Sabriel (handout)
- plot, characters and setting – how does the writer hint at bigger things?
- fantasy conventions?
- emerging themes or ideas?
Journal Prompt: As we have seen, fantasy hinges on creating settings (or entire worlds) that are different than our own or that include elements that could not possibly exist in our own reality. These worlds can defy our laws and scientific explanations through the use of magic and mysticism. The worlds can be whimsical, serious, or downright dark. Using the conventions we’ve discussed, build a fantasy setting that you might want to use for the unit fiction project. Remember to include vivid and specific details, and choose those details wisely so that, like Nix, you are able to hint at a deeper world through a relatively short description.
HW: Complete journal assignment for Monday, 11/21