Anticipation/Reaction Guide

POST BY TINA MORRIS

While teaching non-fiction, I incorporated material from outside the book. It was a chapter out of the graphic novel, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, which deals with a young girl growing up in war torn Iran. I decided to use an anticipation/reaction guide as a teaching tool because I was afraid they would look at the style the book was written in and assume it was a comic book, or fiction. From experience, I also know that I had many misconception about Iranians before reading the book. I wanted them to be able to look at both sets of possible misconception, and figure out for themselves what is true on both points.

For the lesson, I created the anticipation guide, just as the handout has it laid out. At the top, I put questions about graphic novels, such as: “ I can learn something from a graphic novel” and “All graphic novels are fiction.” The last few questions dealt with possible misconceptions dealing with Iranians. Examples include, “People from Iran do not like American things” and “I have something in common with people from Iran.” Before we did anything, I explained the rules of the Anticipation/Reaction Guide, and had the students fill out the left side. From there we watched a movie trailer to a movie based on the graphic novel, followed by reading a chapter out of it. We had a discussion to answer questions students had, followed by a reviewing of the anticipation/reaction guide, and questions that asked questions to the statements in the guide.