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Brave New Teaching/Workshop Week: Teaching Dystopia
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  • $60

Workshop Week: Teaching Dystopia

  • Course
  • 20 Lessons
  • 14-day access

WORKSHOP WEEK: TEACHING DYSTOPIA Tackle your lesson planning with a genre-based inquiry approach for your next dystopia unit. Whether you’re planning a whole-class novel unit or a literature circle / choice style unit, we have ideas, lessons, and solutions ready to deliver. *Includes 14 days access*
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BRAVE NEW TEACHING PRESENTS

TEACHING DYSTOPIA WORKSHOP: The Genre Approach

A Virtual Workshop for ELA Teachers!

As the world continues to challenge us with a global pandemic, political discord, and educational challenges, getting a dystopia unit in front of students is a priority.   Anti-racist books in elementary school libraries are being targeted.  Vigilantism in reporting lawbreakers is being encouraged.  The world is getting close and closer to looking like a dystopia and we need to help our students navigate their part in it all.

The Brave New Teaching duo is here to help you and your teaching team design, instruct, and enjoy your next dystopian text and understand the genre's place in our ever-changing curriculums.   Whether your a department chair looking for your next PD opportunity or a classroom teacher looking to invest in continuing your education, the Teaching Dystopia Virtual Workshop provides over six hours of professional development, a guiding workbook for notes, and a massive supply of resources to accompany each training.

Looking for inquiry-driven unit support?

You've come to the right place.

Let's double check that we are the perfect fit for where you find yourself in your teaching life right about now.

  • You are in the stages of considering a new dystopia unit to add to your curriculum

  • You are building a brand new curriculum and need ideas for units to scaffold over multiple grade levels

  • You taught a dystopia once, but didn't love how the unit turned out

  • You're a brand new teacher that's been handed a dystopia unit and you're panicking

In this workshop, you will learn a variety ways to approach a dystopia y unit that will leave you feeling empowered, organized, and confident that your unit will be meaningful and memorable for your students.

Dystopian Unit Ideas You Won't Find Anywhere Else!

VERSATILE

Whether you teach a dystopian whole-class novel or your own selected choice novels, this PD will support a wide range of teaching situations.

ONE-OF-A-KIND

PD from Brave New Teaching is uniquely special:  all fo the instruction and resources come directly from our over combined 30+ years of experience in the classroom.  This is PD for teachers by teachers.

SELF-PACED

Access the PD when it's most convenient for YOU.  There are no time limits, no cut-offs, and your movement throughout the PD is entirely in your control.  

JAM-PACKED

This PD contains over a dozen video trainings, resources, and ideas to make your next dystopia unit pop!  Your creative engine will be sparked and filled with refreshing ideas.

An Overview of the Workshop

The original Festival took place over the course of five days, but now, all trainings are available to you immediately.  Each module is designed to support teachers as they build a new dystopian unit from scratch OR are revamping a unit that needs a new approach.

Here is an overview of what you will see in the replay of the BNT Fall Festival Workshop:
  • Module One:  Introducing Dystopia & Using Essential Questions
    • Amanda & Marie provide the foundation for the unit by sharing their favorite gateway activities and their most successful Essential Questions. (approx. 25 minutes)
  • Module Two:  Teaching the Elements of the Genre
    • Amanda shares the components of the dystopian genre and how those can be used to organize a unit, to help students refine their answers to the EQ, and to pull in rich layers of supplementray text.  (approx. 35 minutes)
  • Module Three:  Dystopian Whole-Class Novels
    • This training contains SIX separate videos that are entirely dedicated to individual novels that are commonly taught at the high school level.  Hear about the essential questions, assessments, guiding threads, and supplementary texts that Amanda and Marie use to teach The Handmaid's Tale, The Hunger Games, Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, and Brave New World.  While each video is focused on an individual novel, the activities and approaches are applicable to many other novels, too!  (approx. 20-30 per training)
  • Module Four:  Dystopian Literature Circles:  How to Pull it Off
    • Marie takes participants through suggested approaches to tackling more than one dystopian novel at once.  Through lit circles or choice reading, she will help you pull a central thread through the unit while still giving students the autonomy and engagement that choice provides. (approx. 20 minutes)
  • Module Five:  20 Powerful Poems, Short Stories, Nonfiction, and Film to Boost Critical Thinking
    • Amanda and Marie team up to bring their most successful shorter texts to a dystopia unit.  Suggestions include short stories, film, podcasts, nonfiction, and more!  All recommendations are linked and several also come with free resources to use with the texts.

Here's What Our Teachers Have to Say

“Marie and Amanda are fun, entertaining and super relatable educators and humans. As a teacher who has years of experience but is new to the ELA classroom, Brave New Teaching gives me lots of tools, insights and strategies, which are suited for both newbies and well seasoned teachers. Most importantly, they tackle the big questions and the “why” of our job as educators, from the trenches of the high school English classroom. An overall great listen!”

Aviva

"Y'all worded it right that "Teachers helping teachers is the best kind of PD!" Thank you for the amazing resources, explanations, and positive attitudes toward teaching novels. I am inspired to take this new knowledge into my school building with me and use it to make positive changes to my instruction!"

Aseanah

“The insights and strategies provided by Marie and Amanda are an inspiration. This is the time to innovate. If you are in need of fresh ideas and perspectives for your English classroom, this is the podcast for you!”

Gretchen

"I love dystopian fiction and have taught a couple of these texts, but the fresh eyes approach has really given me a sense of joy. I love the three activities for assessment, particularly the sesame street one. I love your enthusiasm. I love the fact that you offer both free resources and paid ones, for those who can afford them. I love the fact that it is about helping teachers in these difficult times."

Mary

Why Dystopia and why now?

The landscape of education is always evolving as we become better at our craft and better at recognizing the inequities present in our curriculums and the educational system. 

Literature, especially dystopian literature, provides both a mirror and a window to our world.  As students wrestle with the complex current events swirling around them, dystopian literature offers students a fictional world where they can start experimenting with making claims about their own opinions about leadership, power, freedom, and human rights.

  • Dystopias challenge us to think about our current society, both from the level of a citizen and a leader.  Dystopian protagonists, antagonists, and conflicts span a wide range of classics, author backgrounds, YA options, and time periods.
  • Dystopian fiction, when framed with a relevant and genuine Essential Question, act as mirrors for our students in their own lives and in our own societies
  • Because the genre is so widely read and popular, a unit could take on a challenging whole-class text (Brave New World, Animal Farm, etc.) or be created at a more approachable level in literature circles with more accessible texts.
  • There is an abundance of non-novel material to bing in and pair with the class reading.  From poetry to film, this genre had endless options for supplemental texts.

  • $60

Workshop Week: Teaching Dystopia

  • Course
  • 20 Lessons
  • 14-day access

WORKSHOP WEEK: TEACHING DYSTOPIA Tackle your lesson planning with a genre-based inquiry approach for your next dystopia unit. Whether you’re planning a whole-class novel unit or a literature circle / choice style unit, we have ideas, lessons, and solutions ready to deliver. *Includes 14 days access*
Buy now

We're Amanda & Maire

The co-hosts of the Brave New Teaching Podcast & co-creators of this workshop.

We've been teaching for over 30 years combined, and with that experience, we know exactly what NOT to do. We've failed plenty of times, and from all of those mistakes, we've learned how to carefully adjust and align our curriculum design to best:

  • meet students where they are

  • engage our students

  • teach basic AND challenging skills

  • align instruction with assessment

  • de-center texts and center inquiry

JOIN US AS A HAPPY HOUR GOLD MEMBER!

MOST POPULAR OPTION

While we do offer the Teaching Memoir and Biography Workshop as a stand alone workshop, most of our teachers prefer to join us at a monthly rate. At just $27/month, you not only have access to Teaching Memoir and Biography, but to ALL of our workshops AND our monthly subscriber-only podcast.

Happy Hour teachers love having access to every single workshop whenever they need it. We know how much teaching changes, and you never know if you'll be switching courses or suddenly long-term subbing in a course you've never taught! Give yourself the peace of mind to have multiple genre-based workshops at your fingertips whenever you need them.

JOIN HAPPY HOUR GOLD

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Welcome to the Fall Festival: Teaching Dystopia

Let's get this party started!!!
  • 1.45 MB
Getting Started Resources
  • 1.45 MB
About Your Instructors

    Day 1: Introducing Dystopia

    Introducing Dystopia: Essential Questions & Gateway Activities
    • 24 mins
    • 320 MB

    Day 2: Close Reading Elements of the Dystopian Genre

    Elements of the Dystopian Genre
    • 31 mins
    • 314 MB

    SPECIAL EVENT: Using The Donut for Engaged Citizenship

    Using The Donut for Engaged Citizenship
    • 7 mins
    • 59.5 MB

    Day 3: Dystopian Whole-Class Novels

    WHOLE CLASS NOVELS: START HERE
    • 5 mins
    • 145 MB
    Fahrenheit 451
    • 32 mins
    • 416 MB
    Animal Farm
    • 11 mins
    • 71.3 MB
    The Handmaid's Tale
    • 33 mins
    • 280 MB
    Lord of the Flies
    • 14 mins
    • 85.8 MB
    Brave New World
    • 23 mins
    • 212 MB
    The Hunger Games
    • 10 mins
    • 61.9 MB

    Day 4: Dystopian Literature Circles

    Dystopian Literature Circles
    • 19 mins
    • 141 MB

    SPECIAL EVENT: Using Parlay with your Dystopia Unit

    SPECIAL EVENT: Using Parlay with your Dystopia Unit
    • 6 mins
    • 89.3 MB

    Day 5: 20+ Supplemental Text Ideas for your Dystopia Unit

    Supplementary Text Ideas for Dystopia
    • 32 mins
    • 251 MB

    Thank You & Closing!

    It's time to say goodbye :(
    • 5 mins
    • 185 MB

    Workshop Week Bonuses!

    Midsummer Close Read III.2 (Workshop Week Bonus #4) .pdf
    • 69.6 KB
    Close Reading Novels in Verse {BNT Bonus Lesson for Workshop Week}.docx
    • 2.06 MB
    WW Bonuses One Pager.pdf
    • 3.31 MB