1. Provide a wide variety of popular magazines for students to examine. Instruct students to pay particular attention to the formats of these publications and the use of text and pictures.

2. Ask students to bring in reading materials about their favorite popular culture topics and figures. Explain that they should use these materials to collect information for use in their own zines.

3. Make overhead transparencies of the Facts–Questions–Interpretations handout and the Comic Strip Planning Sheet, and make copies of both handouts for each student.

4. Make a copy for each student of the handout My Own Zine Evaluation.

5. Familiarize yourself with the ReadWriteThink.org online tools used in this lesson (see Online Resources). Bookmark these tools on students’ computers, and make sure that they function properly. Be prepared to provide support and assistance to students as they use these tools to create their projects. Either before or during the lesson, introduce each tool using an LCD projector, and model use of the tool by working with the class to create a shared piece of writing.

6. Create your own sample zine for students to examine in Session 1 when you introduce the project. Provide several copies of this sample zine.

7. Make sure students are familiar with each of the different genres they will be using in the project. If you need to introduce or review any of the genres, you may wish to use the suggestions in ReadWriteThink.org Lesson Plans That Teach Genres of Writing.

8. Introduce the concept of multigenre texts. You may wish to adapt suggestions and resources from the lesson “Reading and Analyzing Multigenre Texts”.