Teachers' Notes
This series of activities was created by two French Lycée teachers. However, they may be used at other levels than Lycée, since many elements are easy to change, adapt or simplify. For instance, you may not want to go through all steps. Whatever your choices, we'd be glad to get some feedback on this, so please drop us a line !
Step 1 : Brainstorming
Each student could get a worksheet with the following questions (or the teacher could ask them to the class or write them on the board...) :
(A few ideas : Superheroes are fiction characters, they were invented by cartoonists / comics artists. You can find them in American comics such as Marvel Comics. They’re very strong, they have special powers /superpowers. .They’re often mutants / their genes or body or limbs etc have undergone some kind of mutation. Their goal is to protect the innocent / save the planet from all sorts of aggression. They often fight terrible enemies (who themselves have superpowers) who are called “villains” or "super villains". They’re also very strong, and usually want to dominate or destroy our planet! …)
The students should have a few minutes to chew over this, they may start writing their answers with a pencil, and then everything's put in common (orally). It'd be great if the teacher could use an OHP while students suggest answers... Of course we're just talking about basic notes here, and a secondary goal is to turn these notes into a full paragraph, so this should be an actual writing assignment (in groups or not, homework or not: but in the end, try to make your students read their productions aloud).
Note: the Christopher Reeve picture at the bottom of the front/index page could also be used to launch the topic, since everybody's heard more or less about his story.
Step 2 : Create a biography
Now that's up to you... Not many comments here...
Step 3 : Ask and answer
This requires a separation of your class in two parts: Group A gets all the information on THOR and gapped information on WONDER WOMAN, and Group B obviously gets the opposite. They all have to complete their own worksheet, while answering the other group's questions. This should make them work their communication skills, and you might find useful to remind them beforehand of the way you're supposed to ask questions in English!
You will find all the necessary documents here, ie Wonder Woman (gapped), Thor (gapped), Wonder Woman (full), Thor (full), all in Word format (.doc), weighing 100 to 200Ko each. If you wish to have a plain text version for layout reasons or something, here's Wonder Woman (gapped) and Thor (gapped) in .txt format for just 3Ko. You may also get all of this in a single zipped file (401Ko) !
Of course, you want each group to keep their information "secret" until the others have asked the proper questions! Make that clear straight away!
You might also find a bit difficult to find all 20 missing words : it could be better to assign a time limit to that activity, even if everything has not been found. Each student should be able to find a question to ask, depending on their level (some are very easy, others quite tricky!).
You may also, of course, adapt those worksheets by filling or changing a number of gaps, or by giving clues, or by giving a separate list of the missing words, etc.
Step 4 : Stan Lee's interview
Oral Comprehension
You might want to start by showing a picture of Stan Lee (here is one from the interview) with the OHP, and ask students who this could be (the Spiderman in the back should help!!). Try to find together some biographic information (they should know of a few characters he's created by now). Then students could also imagine the sorts of questions they'd like to ask this man, and why he's being interviewed.
Then you have the choice between:
How's that for choice ?! All these files link directly to the BBC's site where we found the interview, it works much better this way than if we had copied the files directly on this site here. However, if for some reason you'd like to have the film of the interview to use on a DVD player instead of watching it on the Net, you can also try to copy it on a DVD or even on a CDRom (in VCD format then).
Many things can be done around this interview. A good idea could be first to let the students read the questions and imagine Mr Lee's answers. Then they could listen to his actual answers and compare with what they'd thought before, see if they were right etc. This can also be done on just a few questions.
You might also imagine a gapped comprehension worksheet, or a MCQ-type comprehension exercises, or... Anyway, if you find an idea that works and if you want to contribute to this page, your ideas are more than welcome! Write us!
Step 5 : Create your own superhero
We had originally added this line to the Resources (Optional)
part:
" The Hero
Machine might also be helpful if your artist can't draw ;-) but be careful!
If you spend too much time on this machine, your presentation will not be ready
in due time!"
However, we decided to part with the idea since we thought students would spend
more time playing with this (great !) machine instead of actually creating a
character. Depending on your students' attitude etc, you may want to give them
the link or not --or you might simply want to let them see it at the very end,
when everything's done! Note that this is a Flash animation (.swf), which is
a bit heavy to download but which can be stored on HDs for further use. Ask
Frédéric if
you don't know how to deal with thoses files.
We suggest that once roles are assigned, you meet separately with all the Historians,
and then with all the Biographers and so on, to make sure that everybody knows
their roles very clearly. Afterwards, they'll be on their own!
It would also be preferrable to let the students know beforehand exactly how
they'll be evaluated on this (provided you want to do so, obviously), but we
haven't taken care of that here because it depends on so many factors that our
expectations might not match yours at all.
Step 6 : Contest!
Hope you'll participate! Remember that the best pages will be published on this site, and this can be quite an incentive to some students!
Going further
If you wish to complete this series of lessons, here are a few Internet links we have found, but not used yet.
For a comparison between Captain America and Captain Britain :
http://home.flash.net/~jeanneb/c.html
http://pc59te.dte.uma.es/cdb/series/marvel/britanic.htm
http://www.fact-index.com/c/ca/captain_britain.html
http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/c/capbrit.htm
(more stuff here)
Some super heroes come from so-called minorities :
African Americans :
http://www.blacksuperhero.com/history.html
http://www2.warnerbros.com/web/staticshock/home.jsp
Native Americans :
http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/s/shaman.htm
http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/p/peecpart.htm
http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/reviews/96491576183385.htm
Latinos :
http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/a/amigoman.htm
http://www.amigoman.com/aman.html/aman_splash.html
Aboriginals:
http://www.marveldirectory.com/individuals/g/gateway.htm
Even Jews! :
http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/j/jhcorps.htm