Teaching Strategies
P.A.C.T.T. Analysis
Throughout this unit, students will be analyzing not only the core text Persepolis but also a variety of supplemental texts to provide background information and to explore the unit’s guiding question: Can graphic narratives reveal the truth more effectively than other, more realistic media? Whenever considering a historic, news, persuasive, or other non-fiction text, students should think about the interplay between the content (what they see or hear), the context (any relevant background, author’s intentions, time and place, publication/production details), and the form (the medium, any conventions of genre or language used). While these considerations are routinely encouraged in secondary English classrooms, providing students with a memorable acronym to signal their steps of analysis will help them take more ownership of assigned tasks and transfer the process of image analysis to domains outside of the classroom. Therefore, after students read a text to determine its objective or surface-level content, teach students to make a PACTT with the images and texts they encounter to help them determine the text’s intentions and implications. Students do not need to complete the components of PACTT analysis in a sequential order; instead, each letter of the acronym represents a different component of text or image analysis that students should consider wholistically—Purpose, Author, Context, Text type, and Technique. In this strategy, think of text, author, and reader in a broad sense. A text can be an image, video, news article, graphic narrative, or piece of art. The author is the primary producer of that text. The readers are anyone viewing, reading, listening to, or otherwise consuming the text.
Purpose—When commenting on this component, students should consider the intention of the text’s author or producer. Is the author trying to inform audiences? What is the main information the author wants readers to know? Is the author trying to persuade readers to act or to see an issue from a certain viewpoint? Is the author trying to disprove popular opinion? Is the author trying to attract as many readers as possible? Why, and how does this goal influence the way the author represents a certain subject?
Author (biases)--Who is the author? Where is the author from? Does the author have any cultural, religious, professional, or ideological associations that might cause bias or otherwise impact the author’s perspective?
Context—This category addresses the text’s physical, historical, and cultural settings. What are the time and place of the event(s) happening in the text, and why is this setting important to the text? When and where was the text written, published, and distributed? How might these settings have influenced the author and the readers’ understanding of the text? What cultural practices or attitudes might be important to the text?
Text-type—When considering text-type, students ask questions about the text’s genre and medium. What type of medium is the text—photograph, TikTok video, comic book, print news article, online news article? Why did the author choose this type of medium? What effects does this medium have that would be harder to achieve using other mediums? What is the text’s genre and sub-genre—fiction, nonfiction, memoir, documentary, graphic narrative, news media?
Technique—This category involves students analyzing the effects of any technique of craft. When analyzing a news photo, for example, students should ask the following: What is in the foreground, midground, or background of the image? Why? Does the photographer use color in an interesting way? How does the photographer use light in the image? What does the photographer emphasize? Is there anything that seems omitted or left out? See Conventions of the Graphic Narrative Genre under the Content Objectives section for terminology and explanations that will help students analyze Satrapi’s craft in Persepolis.
I recommend introducing students to PACTT analysis in the unit’s prereading section when they begin analyzing American representations of Iranians through news media and Rick Steves’ travel documentary. Model the strategy with whole-class instruction for one of the first media images, use guided practice in small groups after viewing portions of Rick Steves’ documentary, and then gradually release responsibility to independent practice as students read Persepolis. See the Prereading section Representation of Iran in Western Media under Classroom Activities for a detailed description of how you can use this strategy in instruction.
Thematic Reading Notes
As students read Persepolis, encourage them to take thematic reading notes on the following topics: social classes, the effects of a repressive government, the abuse of religion, women’s rights, and the conflicts/relationships between Eastern and Western cultures and thinking. Students could use a variety of systems for these notes: a color-coded sticky note system with a different color for each of the five topics, a separate notebook page for each topic for which students to write their notes and reflections as they read, a color-coded note system that applies a different color to each topic and allows students to take notes in sequential order yet still categorize them, or a labeling system that assigns each topic a short label (such as EW for “Eastern and Western cultures and thinking”). By taking organized notes as they read, students will be able to track the development of Satrapi’s themes and prepare for discussions and end-of-the-unit assessments. To support students in their notetaking, make a point to emphasize details connecting to the five topics and ask students to share relevant ideas with each other. See the Content Objectives section for information and relevant details in Persepolis pertaining to each of the five categories.
Representation Comparison-Contrast
Throughout the reading, help students explore the unit’s guiding question by asking them to compare media or other representations of key events or people in Iranian history to their representation in Persepolis. The photographs in Steinzova and Greer’s photo essay “In Pictures: Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution” or the excerpts from Jacqueline Saper’s memoir From Miniskirt to Hijab mentioned in the Content Objectives material would make fruitful comparisons with excerpts from Persepolis. If students completed the Historical Timeline of the Iranian Revolution activity (described under Class Activities), relevant photographs will already be available. Encourage students to use the PACTT strategy for analyzing images to support their comparisons. I recommend any of these excerpts from Persepolis for comparison:
- Ebi’s photographs of the demonstrations (Satrapi 29); “In Pictures” Photos 3, 7, 9
- Anti-Shah demonstrations (Satrapi 38); “In Pictures” Photos 1, 2,
- Departure of the Shah (Satrapi 41); “In Pictures” Photo 11
- Iranians leaving the country (Satrapi 63-64); “In Pictures” Photo 14
- Celebration after the Shah’s departure (Satrapi 42); “In Pictures” Photo 19
This strategy would work well with students working in pairs. One partner would complete a PACTT analysis for the photograph and the other partner would complete the PACTT for a corresponding excerpt from Persepolis. Then, students could share their observations with each other and discuss these questions to compare the two different representations of events: 1. What is similar about how the two different texts represent their subject or topic? 2. How do the two texts represent their subject or topic in different ways? (Think about the perspective, what is omitted, what is emphasized, or any noteworthy techniques in each text.) 3. How do the different perspectives, intentions, or biases of each author influence the way they represent their subject or topic?
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