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Teaching Science Fiction (5–12)
Curriculum Strategies, Language and Literacy | 5-12
All literature has the power to change the world, but maybe none more so than science fiction. Based in the future, but most often rooted in subtle realities of modern life, science fiction paints powerful portraits of possibilities for our world. For this reason, it is one of the most compelling and important fiction genres to instruct students in.
In this course, you’ll explore the tropes and intricacies that define modern science fiction, including antiheroes, dystopian settings, and the modern-day hero’s journey. Building on this foundation, you’ll design an instructional unit based on science fiction that develops students’ reading, writing, listening and speaking, and language skills. In addition, you’ll explore the power of using science fiction across subject areas, and in developing students’ critical-thinking skills and understanding of media literacy and current events.
Using the materials and strategies from this course, you’ll be able to create a powerful unit on the science fiction novel of your choice to help students better understand the present and launch into an exciting future.
Connections to Practice
This course provides the following classroom connections:
- Tools and resources to support the instruction of the science fiction genre
- Ideas for content, processes, and products to utilize in a science fiction unit
- Techniques for designing reading and writing instructional units focusing on science fiction
- Activities and ideas to utilize science fiction for critical thinking, media literary, and to support cross-curricular literacy
- Strategies to support the learning needs of diverse student groups through differentiation and an examination of equity
Course Objectives
In this course, participants will:
- Outline genre traits and the impact of genre on setting and other elements of reader understanding.
- Incorporate the understanding of specialized literary techniques common in science fiction in instructional planning.
- Develop an understanding of how to design an objective-based reading and writing unit.
- Outline the connections between reading and writing in lesson design.
- Examine strategies and tools to differentiate reading and writing instruction to meet a range of diverse learner needs in achieving equitable outcomes.
- Recognize the relevancy of media literacy in instruction and connections to science fiction novels through propaganda and other literary tools.
- Initiate connections to support cross-disciplinary literacy in areas of social studies and science.
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- Train your staff in as little as eight hours or delve deeper into complex topics in our longer courses.
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We intentionally plan and build our course offerings to solve real problems in education. We regularly update our existing catalog and develop new courses based on schools’ needs, trends in K–12 education, and continual feedback from educators. Depending on your needs, you can train your staff in as little as eight hours with our short courses, or delve into complex topics in our longer ones.
Our course writers are content experts with extensive subject matter credentials and classroom experience. They work closely with our development team to build an experience that is relevant, highly practical, and aligned with industry standards. Courses are not just filled with innovative techniques, but also illustrate how to apply these tools in practice. With each course, teachers develop tangible products such as lesson plans or assessments that they can use immediately in their classrooms.
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