Weeks
The twelve-week teaching schedule: what happens in each week, what to prepare, and what leaves the room.
Twelve weeks, each built around one convention of picture books and the progression that breaks it: Notice, Break, Construct, Test, Integrate.
Week01How Should a Picture Book Behave?What a picture book seems to do without trying — and what happens once you go looking for the rules underneath it.Week02The Picture Isn’t What You ThinkOne source image, four different framings — and what each one quietly tells the reader to assume.Week03Words and Pictures DisagreeOne fixed sentence, three pictures — and three different things a reader has to do with them.Week04The Story Is LyingA four-page story that means one thing on the first read and something else on the second — if the clue was really there all along.Week05The Story Behind the StoryA short sequence where one story is obvious and a second one is quietly happening behind it.Week06The Page Is a PlaceA short sequence where something establishes a spatial rule about the page — then breaks it, and something changes because it did.Week07Don’t Turn the PageOne page-turn pair, designed so the reader has to turn the page to find out what changes.Week08Read It the Wrong WaySix fixed cards, two different orders, two meaningfully different stories — and a way for a reader to find both.Week09The Reader Did ItA short prototype where one story event cannot happen until the reader actually does something.Week10The Character RefusesEvery student starts with the same line. The character refuses to do what it says — and the story has to respond.Week11The Book Knows It’s a BookChoose one part of the book readers normally ignore, and make the story need it.Week12Make It MisbehaveRemove one trick from your current work and see what the reader loses — and whether the work is better without it.