Table Titans Club

by Scott Kurtz

Valeria’s arrival at a new middle school leads her to Alan, Andrew, and Darius—and to the imaginative world of their tabletop role-playing club. As the friends work to keep the Table Titans Club going, Valeria discovers that finding her place requires more than bravery: it also takes cooperation, empathy, and learning how to handle conflict.

Big Idea

Belonging grows when people make room for one another’s strengths, differences, and mistakes. Collaborative storytelling gives the characters a place to practice the courage and cooperation they need outside the game.

Discussion Questions

1.How does Valeria’s way of approaching conflict help her in some situations and create difficulties in others? What alternatives could she try?
2.What do Alan, Andrew, and Darius offer Valeria besides a chance to play a game? Which moments help you understand what belonging means to her?
3.How are the challenges inside the role-playing adventure similar to the challenges the friends face at school? Where are they different?
4.Choose a panel in which a character’s expression or posture tells you something the dialogue does not. How does that visual information change your understanding?
5.What makes a group welcoming? Using the Table Titans as a starting point, explain how a club can support its members while still disagreeing or making mistakes.

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45 minutes📦 Copies of Table Titans Club, paper or comic-panel templates, pencils, erasers, colored pencils or markers, sticky notes

Learning Goals

Explain how Valeria’s interactions with the Table Titans develop themes of belonging and cooperation.
Use evidence from both words and illustrations to interpret a character’s feelings or choices.
Create a clear comic sequence with a conflict, a response, and a believable outcome.
Adjust narrative pacing through panel arrangement, dialogue length, and wordless moments.
Give and apply constructive feedback during collaborative revision.

Activity Steps

1.Notice and discuss (7 minutes): Read a short, teacher-selected school interaction and a role-playing sequence from the book. Identify what readers learn through dialogue, facial expressions, and panel transitions.
2.Plan the parallel problem (6 minutes): In pairs, invent a club disagreement, such as one member making every decision. Translate it into a fantasy problem, such as an adventurer refusing to listen before choosing a route.
3.Map the beats (7 minutes): Plan two four-panel scenes. In each, include a setup, a conflict, a pause or reaction, and a cooperative next step.
4.Draw and write (14 minutes): Create both scenes using original characters. Include one wordless reaction panel and vary either panel size or dialogue length to control reading speed.
5.Read and revise (7 minutes): Exchange comics with another pair. Readers identify where they hurried, paused, or felt tension; creators revise one pacing choice.
6.Reflect (4 minutes): Share how the fantasy scene reveals the same social problem as the school scene. Connect the lesson to Valeria and the Table Titans.

Standards Connections

ELA: RL.3.3 / RL.4.3 / RL.6.3 — Describe characters and explain how their responses and interactions influence events; select the benchmark appropriate to the class.
ELA: RL.5.7 — Analyze how visual elements contribute to a text’s meaning, tone, or beauty.
ELA: W.3.3–W.7.3 — Write narratives using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences, with grade-appropriate expectations.
ELA: SL.3.1–SL.7.1 — Participate effectively in collaborative discussions, building on others’ ideas.
SEL: Relationship skills and self-management — Practice listening, collaborative problem-solving, and constructive responses to conflict.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

Scott Kurtz’s Table Titans Club makes storytelling visible in two ways: readers follow a graphic novel, and its characters participate in a shared role-playing story. Moving between Valeria’s school experiences and the group’s imagined adventures allows students to examine how a writer changes the scale, mood, and speed of a scene. A social disagreement and a fantasy obstacle may look different, yet both depend on what characters want and how others respond. For this Pace-Write-Read study, treat pacing as the management of attention—not simply the speed of action. Ask students to notice how much story time passes between panels, how dialogue directs the eye, and how a reaction can deserve space of its own. Kurtz’s expressive cartooning lets students investigate how images carry information that prose might need several sentences to explain. Move from noticing to experimenting: students read a short sequence, name one craft choice, and test it in their own comic. Younger students can work with four panels and oral explanations; older students can compare alternative layouts and justify revisions with evidence. The goal is not to imitate Kurtz’s drawing style, but to make purposeful choices about when readers should rush, linger, laugh, or reconsider a character.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
Pacing	Compare a school conversation with a Table Titans adventure sequence. Ask how panel count, dialogue, and visible action affect reading speed, rather than assuming that every action scene reads faster.
Plot	Trace how Valeria’s arrival, her involvement with the players, and challenges to the club connect through cause and effect. Separate events that change the situation from moments that deepen our understanding of a character.
Prosody	Read a conversation aloud using expressions and lettering as clues to emphasis and pauses. Discuss how a reader can communicate Valeria’s intensity without shouting every line.
Word	Collect a few gaming terms from the book and infer their meanings from nearby dialogue and pictures. Examine how specialized vocabulary helps establish the club’s shared interests while context welcomes unfamiliar readers.
Concept	State the book’s central situation in one sentence: a newcomer finds a possible place to belong through a tabletop role-playing club. Discuss why combining school life with imagined adventure creates opportunities for both humor and meaningful conflict.
Voice & Worldview	Compare how Valeria and another club member speak about a difficult situation. Ask what their word choices and reactions suggest about how each person understands courage, fairness, or friendship.
Point of View	Distinguish whose experience a scene centers from the visual angle used to draw it. Follow Valeria’s experience, then ask what another character might notice or interpret differently.
Setting & Place	Compare the visual cues that establish school spaces with those establishing the imagined game world. Discuss how readers recognize a setting change without needing a long written explanation.
Original Characters	Choose Valeria, Alan, Andrew, or Darius and list specific traits supported by actions, speech, and appearance. Use those observations to create an original club member with a distinct desire and a complication—not a copy of an existing character.
Dialogue	Examine how a club conversation both exchanges information and reveals relationships. Have students shorten their own dialogue while preserving the speaker’s intention and personality.
Details	Inspect a gaming scene for small details that clarify what the players are doing or feeling. Ask which details are necessary for understanding and which enrich the atmosphere.
Descriptions	Choose a panel introducing a person or place and translate its visual information into two descriptive sentences. Compare how quickly the picture communicates details with how prose controls their order.
Firsts	Study Valeria’s early encounters with the club and its members. Identify what readers learn immediately and what Kurtz allows them to discover gradually.
Immediacy & Engagement	Find a moment when a gesture, expression, or immediate problem pulls readers into Valeria’s experience. Invite students to open their comics with something happening rather than a paragraph of explanation.
Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Compare an interaction shown across several panels with a transition that moves readers quickly onward. Discuss why friendship-building or conflict may need a full scene while routine movement can be compressed.
Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Identify a moment when readers wonder how a character will respond or whether the club will succeed. Explain what information the sequence provides and what it temporarily withholds.
Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Distinguish a move into the imagined adventure from a move backward or forward in story time. If the selected pages do not use flashback or flash-forward, treat those as alternative revision tools rather than claiming they appear.
Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Inspect a page ending and the page that follows it: does the turn reveal a reaction, change the setting, or continue an action? Ask students to explain how the placement affects anticipation.
Pace & Creativity	Redraw a short, book-inspired club interaction first in three panels and then in six. Discuss how extra space can add emotional complexity—or slow a scene unnecessarily.
Play	Use the Table Titans’ shared game to discuss how rules and imagination work together. Give students one fictional obstacle and several possible solutions so they experience how choices generate story.
Performance	Perform a brief exchange as the players, then as their imagined adventurers where appropriate. Notice how posture, timing, and vocal emphasis distinguish everyday conversation from role-playing.
Personality	Compare two characters’ responses to the same situation. Ask students to show personality through a choice or gesture before adding dialogue that explains it.
Humor	Select a funny exchange and identify how its setup, expression, and response work together. Test how adding an extra reaction panel changes the timing of a student-created joke.
Pause	Look for a moment when a face or posture invites readers to linger, whether or not the panel is wordless. Discuss how a pause can make Valeria’s feelings more understandable before the next action.
Poetry / Poetic Devices	Explore the imaginative relationship between school challenges and fantasy challenges as a possible source of metaphor. Ask students to write one metaphor for belonging, while distinguishing their interpretation from an explicit comparison in the book.
Repetition	Look for repeated expressions, actions, or visual arrangements in club interactions. Discuss whether a repetition builds familiarity, creates humor, or makes a later change more noticeable.
Rhythm	Trace the back-and-forth of a Table Titans conversation across its panels. Compare that conversational rhythm with a sequence organized around movement or a dramatic reveal.
Punctuation	Examine punctuation in selected speech balloons alongside facial expressions and lettering. Read a student-written line with different punctuation to test how its urgency or hesitation changes.
Questions	Identify a question that seeks information and another that expresses doubt, challenge, or curiosity. Connect those spoken questions to the larger question of whether Valeria will find belonging.
Compare-Contrast	Compare cooperation at the gaming table with cooperation during a school conflict. Require evidence of both similarities and differences rather than treating the fantasy world as an exact match for everyday life.
Objects	Examine visible gaming materials, such as dice, and explain their practical role in the scene. Discuss how an ordinary game object can also suggest shared interest or membership.
Threes	Use a club interaction to practice a three-beat sequence: situation, complication, response. Present this as a writing experiment, then check whether the selected book sequence actually follows that pattern.
Lists	Make a short inventory of what the players need to participate, separating objects from social skills. Test whether a list would efficiently establish a student comic’s game session or delay its opening.
White Space & Negative Space	Notice gutters between panels and relatively uncluttered areas around characters or words. Discuss how these spaces separate moments and direct attention; students can test the effect by simplifying one crowded panel.
Art & Graphics	Analyze how Kurtz uses expressive faces, body language, framing, and color to communicate a scene’s mood. Ask students to explain what would be lost if they read only the dialogue.
Interactives & Gamification	Distinguish the characters’ interactive tabletop game from the reader’s experience of a fixed graphic narrative. Adapt the club’s collaborative storytelling into a classroom choice activity in which students explain the consequences of different decisions.
Placement	Follow the reading path through a selected page, noting balloon order and the placement of important reactions. Have students check whether a partner reads their original comic in the intended order.
Form	Discuss why a graphic novel suits a story that moves between players and imagined adventures. Convert a short sequence into prose and compare how each form handles expression, setting, and elapsed time.
Dummy	Explain that a dummy is a rough page-by-page mock-up, not a finished illustration. Students can fold scrap paper to plan where their club scene shifts into fantasy and where a reveal should fall.
Passion	Notice how the characters’ investment in gaming gives the club emotional importance. Invite students to build a scene around an interest they care about and show why it matters through a character’s actions.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-It! task: The Pause Before the Plan. (0–3 minutes) Revisit a short Table Titans interaction involving Valeria and her fellow players; identify how pictures and dialogue reveal a response to disagreement. (3–6 minutes) Give pairs this original, book-inspired scenario: a fantasy party reaches a locked gate, and one adventurer wants to act before hearing anyone else’s idea. Plan four beats: obstacle, impulsive suggestion, reaction, shared plan. (6–13 minutes) Draw a four-panel comic with original adventurers, including a wordless third panel that lets readers register another character’s feelings. (13–17 minutes) Exchange comics and read silently; partners mark where they paused and explain what caused the pause. (17–20 minutes) Revise one panel or balloon, then finish this reflection: 'Like Valeria and the Table Titans, our characters need to ____. We helped readers notice this by ____.' Artistic polish is not required; the focus is pacing and cooperation.

Classroom Activities

One Challenge, Two Worlds

Students create paired comic scenes: one featuring a school-club disagreement and one translating the same problem into a fantasy quest inspired by the Table Titans’ role-playing adventures. They use panel size, dialogue, and a deliberate pause to show how characters move from conflict toward cooperation.

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