Authenticity: Transforming Your Teaching Approach with the Authentic Learning Framework

Begin the model lesson with the title on slide 8 and remind participants that the content is designed for high school students. The topic is not as important for them to focus on so much as the approach that is being used to teach the topic. Move on to slides 9 and 10 to introduce the essential question and learning objectives for the model lesson.

Begin the Menti version of the Always, Sometimes, Never activity on slide 11. If needed, unhide slides 12-16 for the non-Menti version of this activity. In this activity, participants will respond to statements about vampires as if they are always true, sometimes true, or never true. The purpose of this activity is to activate prior knowledge. They will see responses from the entire room so that they can compare their own assumptions about these tropes with the group’s assumptions as a whole. They might be surprised that everyone has different experiences or impressed that the whole group has had very consistent experiences informing them about vampires. 

Then, move to slide 17 and review the definition of “trope.” This will lead into the next activity on slide 18, where participants will follow the Affinity Process and write as many characteristics as possible of vampires that they can think of on one piece of paper in three minutes. Start the K20 3-Minute Timer. Once they’ve run out of ideas and the three minutes are up, move to slide 19 so that participants can compare their notes with those of an Elbow Partner and see if there are some broad categories into which they can fit their combined characteristics. They can use another blank piece of paper to label the categories of tropes they identified. Start the K20 3-Minute Timer. Once the timer has run out, move to slide 20 and, using the K20 5-Minute Timer, have each set of partners at a table compare their categories and determine how they can combine them together into groups. Move to slide 21 and have participants share their group’s categories, reminding them that they will use those in the next activity.

Move on to slide 22 and pass out the Notes About Vampires handout. Explain that many of the tropes brainstormed in the last activity will be visible in action as they watch a few movie and television show clips as well as read excerpts from novels about vampires. As they watch or read each piece, start the I Notice, I Wonder strategy by asking participants to jot down the tropes they notice. 

Pass out the Author Influences handout to each participant (or per pair) then play the videos on slides 23-25. Be sure to pause for a moment after showing each clip and ask participants to review their handout and read about the author of that work. Once all the clips have been viewed, move to slide 26 and have participants complete the “I Wonder” column. Encourage them to make note of any connections the participants wonder about between the author’s influences and the way they wrote their vampire characters and used these tropes in their work. 

Display side 27 and pass out the Vampire Readings Jigsaw handout having groups of three Jigsaw the readings. This means that each person in the group will read a different excerpt and then share their notes with their group members. Use the same instructions on taking notes in their graphic organizer for the readings as for the videos. 

Once the groups have finished taking and sharing notes on the readings, move on to slide 28, and begin to hand out the set of cards from the Card Matching handout for the timeline Card Sort. Have participants group the cards based on what year in the timeline they believe they fit into.

1. Arrange title covers by date they were published. (

   Publication dates are on the organizer.)

2. Place vampire tropes under the title cover that it matches. (Some tropes may be used more than once.)

The goal for this activity is for participants to take what they have learned about vampire tropes to this point and combine it with potential political, economic, and historical influences on how vampires have been represented through literature and media. Once groups are finished sorting, share the answers on slide 29.

Display slide 30. Depending on how time is going, have participants complete the One-Pager activity or describe it to them as a final assessment of learning (unhide slides 31-34 to display example products of this activity). If time permits, have participants create a poster on chart paper or digitally that illustrates and answers the questions, "How do these authors address the same topic?" and "How did these authors reach different conclusions due to the time period in which they wrote?" 

If you choose not to conduct the One-Pager activity, use the Exit Ticket on slide 35 to take an assessment of learning.

Note the end of the model lesson by showing the standard that was addressed on slide 37.