Recently I build an introductory unit to my AP English Literature and Composition class that centers around Dungeons and Dragons. In short, 5 groups of 5 kids all played the same pre-written Dungeons and Dragons adventure, made those adventures into stories, read Beowulf and then wrote analytical essays drawing connections and exploring the ideas of oral storytelling and archetypes. If you’re interested in reading more, here are my posts:
- Dungeons & Dragons in my AP Lit Classroom – Part 1 – Why Did I Want to Try This? - [I will write more later about what happened in the classroom, what lessons I learned for next time, what I ended up doing to grade them, and how I think this will help them with the rest of the AP Lit curriculum and test) Part 1 – Where Did I Get this Idea? – Or … Continue reading Dungeons & Dragons in my AP Lit Classroom – Part 1 – Why Did I Want to Try This?
- Dungeons and Dragons in AP Lit – Addendum to Part 1 – White Supremacy – What Counts as “Literature” - “What do D&D, the Odyssey and Hip-Hop Have in Common?” This question may feel strange because your vision of D&D may conjure up some very specific images of a very specific type of white male. Wanting to press at this a little, when I first posed this question to my class, I then I asked … Continue reading Dungeons and Dragons in AP Lit – Addendum to Part 1 – White Supremacy – What Counts as “Literature”
- Dungeons and Dragons in AP Lit – Part 2 – How I Set Up the Unit - How I Tried to Make This Work in the Classroom [I will write more later about how the individual class days went as things got moving, and also how I tied this more directly into AP Lit in terms of assessments.] Dungeons and Dragons is notorious for its baroque rules structure. If the first thing … Continue reading Dungeons and Dragons in AP Lit – Part 2 – How I Set Up the Unit
- Dungeons and Dragons in AP Lit – Part 3 – Day to Day Lessons - The Adventure – ~3 weeks of class time (5 85-minute blocks) This post and the next will be more nuts and bolts – I’ve previously written about the why, now I’ll share about the how. This one will be about the bulk of the unit, where kids plays D&D and read Beowulf (some of them … Continue reading Dungeons and Dragons in AP Lit – Part 3 – Day to Day Lessons
- Dungeons and Dragons in AP Lit Part 4 – Assessment - This was tricky for me because they were being asked both to create the texts they would eventually analyze, and then in later analyze them. Here’s what I did: As I’ve posted about previously, the students each participated in 5 85-minute block days where they did 3 things: Let me say more about 3, because … Continue reading Dungeons and Dragons in AP Lit Part 4 – Assessment
Original Positions 