Teaching Dystopia: The Genre Approach

$60

Teaching Dystopia: The Genre Approach

Course
17 Lessons

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.

Buy now

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.

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.

Still have questions?

We've got answers

Consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt?

Quis faucibus proin leo iaculis imperdiet morbi diam. Tristique ac, molestie sed molestie sit. Lacus interdum urna, neque habitant cursus commodo, quis nibh nec. Tortor morbi at nec egestas. Egestas mollis non pellentesque ac tincidunt mattis sit auctor. Ut venenatis lacinia augue maecenas elit.

Consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt?

Quis faucibus proin leo iaculis imperdiet morbi diam. Tristique ac, molestie sed molestie sit. Lacus interdum urna, neque habitant cursus commodo, quis nibh nec. Tortor morbi at nec egestas. Egestas mollis non pellentesque ac tincidunt mattis sit auctor. Ut venenatis lacinia augue maecenas elit.

Consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt?

Quis faucibus proin leo iaculis imperdiet morbi diam. Tristique ac, molestie sed molestie sit. Lacus interdum urna, neque habitant cursus commodo, quis nibh nec. Tortor morbi at nec egestas. Egestas mollis non pellentesque ac tincidunt mattis sit auctor. Ut venenatis lacinia augue maecenas elit.

$60