| Welcome to the DragonLance Section |
| Who I Am My Interests Family & Friends My Faith What I Do St. Therese School My Desk Other Aspects Art Gallery Fantasy Page News Links Song now playing: "A Jetty on the Lake," by Bjorn Lynne This page created July 25, 2000 Last modified March 28, 2004 Picture at right: "Alhanna Starbreeze," as depicted in the DragonLance d20 Campaign Setting, published by Wizards of the Coast |
 |
 |
| Welcome to the section of the site devoted to the DragonLance setting, story, and novels. What is DragonLance? The name DragonLance refers to an entire story to which new episodes are still being added year after year; it covers the lifetimes of numerous characters, takes place over vast distances, and embraces tales of war, romance, tragedy, and all points in between. Authors Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman wrote the first trilogy of novels in the early- to mid-eighties for what was then Gary Gygax's company TSR, which created the Dungeons & Dragons game. After TSR went bankrupt in the 1990s and was bought by Wizards of the Coast, the company continued to publish the novels, which have proven unbelievably popular. Nowadays one can buy the original novels with fantastic -- and much richer-looking -- new cover art. Also, Wizards of the Coast, working with Margaret Weis and three other authors, has published its DragonLance d20 Campagn Setting for the d20 role-playing system, thus taking the DragonLance franchise even further. The DragonLance Unit Every year since I began teaching at St. Therese, the 8th grade Reading class has taken its now-famous DragonLance unit. Similar to what I wished to accomplish in 7th grade Reading, this unit came about primarily because I wanted to have them read something different and memorable. Besides that, I'd read a half-dozen of the books already, and wanted to somehow incorporate at least one into a Reading class. So the Class of 1998 was the first group to get it, and it went well overall. The following year, I decided to expand and enhance the unit by adding what I called the "Character Assignments" and "Mini-quests." Without spoiling it for any students who have not yet taken it, this part of the unit had students writing, calculating, drawing, solving problems, making maps, working both independently and in groups -- the most involved stuff we'd done in Reading. I couldn't believe it the first time I incorporated these assignments with the Class of 1999 -- the assignments were instantly popular, the students were hooked, and, similar to Fiddler on the Roof in 7th grade, I had another instant hit on my hands. And when the Class of 2000 took the unit, something happened that I never thought I'd live to see: students were actually begging me to give them more of the assignments. Think about that for a second; students wanted more homework and couldn't get enough to satisfy them... I thought the world was ending or something. I was staying up nightly until about 2 AM, just making more assignments for them. It was insane and glorious at the same time. What also amazed me was that even though students had to read only the very first book, a number of them, year after year, would go on to buy and read many of the rest of the books, often reading more than I had. And the magic has gone on year after year like that. |
 |