A sample culminating writing/art/all-around creative project for world language classrooms!
Rationale: This activity will provide an alternative to traditional activities on French families offered in a lot of textbooks, and will get students engage with an authentic material: an excerpt from a contemporary Francophone “bande dessinée”. While some students may already know traditional Francophone comics such as Tintin or Astérix, this activity is here to provide them with a more recent and more diverse example. Aya de Yopougon is centered on a young female character growing up in Yop City, a fictional city very similar to writer Marguerite Abouet’s own native city (Abidjan, Ivory Coast). The “reading” phase of this activity is designed to encourage collaborative reading.
In this assignment, students are asked to look at the Code of Hammurabi and use comics to visually represent information from the Code. Students create a storyboard using their understanding of the Code and write a reflection paper summarizing their observations about Babylonian society.
Review of How Comics Work: A 1BUW Production, a booklet created by Candida Rifkind, Brandon Christopher,
and Alice RL in the English department at the University of Winnipeg and accessible at https://winnspace.uwinnipeg.ca/handle/10680/1826.