Assignment Instructions (Google Drive Document)
I remember, for sophomore honors English in high school, creating a mix tape that represented the tone of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. I used my old stereo and my CD player to record the songs from the CD onto the tape (do kids these days know what tapes are?) and then played it for the class. While an assignment like that tapped into my creativity and musical knowledge, it wasn’t as rigorous an assignment as it could have been.
So as I was developing reader response options for my students’ finals this year, while listening to Chameleon Circuit, a band who sings songs about Doctor Who, I thought a better way to do a similar assignment and provide the option of utilizing the technology available was for them to create a tribute band.
The Requirements
As readers think about their stories, they create the following things that relate directly to their story:
- Band name: In Doctor Who, the broken chameleon circuit is what keeps the space ship looking like a blue police box.
- Album title: Still Got Legs When the Doctor regenerates into his eleventh incarnation, this is one of the things he says as he’s inspecting himself. He also makes a comment about how he’s still not ginger (which is the title of one of the songs on the album)
- Album art: Here’s the cover of Chameleon Circuit’s second album, Still Got Legs. It’s reference is the front of the TARDIS.
- 10-13 tracks — here they only have to create the titles of the songs, which should relate directly back to their story
- Explanations of the relationship between three of the tracks and the story, OR full lyrics to one song
I offered an extra credit option, which was to create audio samples of three of the songs (using the Garageband app on my iPad and samples from Free Sound), then explain how the tone and lyrics that they chose represented the story they read. I’m currently working on an example of this for Zombies vs. Unicorns edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier (album art and track titles below). It should be up on YouTube by the end of the summer and I’ll link to it here (I’m learning how to animate, so this should be interesting).
the (book) supplier 
