Misunderstood Monsters

Grades 11–12

9 Sessions: 1 hour each

Fantasy/SciFi, Narrative, Poetry

Projects

We Are Here, Walking Towards the Unknown

Ryan Young

1. Misunderstood Monsters

2. Plotting & Storyboarding

3. Drafting

4. Expand, Expand, Cut, Cut, Expand, Expand

5. Details, Details, Details

6. Keep Expanding!

7. Editing for Organization

8. Get Your Grammar and Mechanics On

9. Final Drafts & Huge High Fives!

Students write personal and fictional narratives inspired by Frankenstein. Prompts include: misunderstood monsters, fears and horrors, a science experiment gone wrong, and rewriting the story.

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Misunderstood Monsters

In this session, students write bios for themselves and brainstorm ideas around a prompt relating to themes in Frankenstein.

What Your Students Will Learn

Students learn about the project, get a sense of major themes in Frankenstein, and use a graphic organizer to guide brainstorming around the students’ chosen prompts.

What You Will Need

Paper and writing utensils
“Frankenstein Quotes” — Handout
“Prompts” – Handout
“Prompt Organizing Sheets” — Handout
“Prompt Checklists” — Handout

Before You Start

All writing prompts and activities for this project are inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and we highly recommend reading the novel with your class. Frankenstein is an incredible text on its own (it literally created a genre, go Mary Shelley!). It will get your students to start thinking about Shelley’s style of prose, and it’s a great mentor text in which to discuss different literary devices.

If you’re not currently reading Frankenstein with your class, the excerpts provided illustrate the four project prompts: misunderstood monsters, fears and horrors, science experiments gone wrong, and rewriting a story. It is recommended that, before beginning this project, you review the general plot and premise of Frankenstein if your class isn’t already familiar with it.