Featuring Fandom: Fan Fiction for 11th Grade ELA Students

Tiffany Kannengieszer

This unit is for 11th grade language arts classrooms. It will focus on the Common Core State Standards for Writing. The goal for this unit is to ignite a passion for writing with students outside of the formulaic, non-fiction writing students usually must focus on throughout the years. In doing so, students will display their understanding of suspense, dialogue, characterization, and theme. They will demonstrate mastery by creating their own pieces of fanfiction. To do this, students will use the novel read in the unit before, We Were Here. After reading it, some students are left without the satisfaction of knowing what happens to all the characters. Students will select one character to create either a flashback or a scene from later in life. The relationship they have already built with this character will open up a world of writing where students are given the power - the power to give characters the relationship they wanted, to show a side of the character previously unknown, to create a future for the character. This unit will walk students through the writing process, specifically with fiction. They will brainstorm, pre-write, work through multiple drafts, revise, and give feedback in hopes of creating life-long lovers of both reading and writing.