» Characterization (Echevarría)
In small groups, students
brainstorm adjectives that they associate with a character or characters,
supporting their results with textual evidence. After sharing among
the entire class, the groups then organize the adjectives into two lists:
those that describe passing activities, situations and states of mind,
and those that describe the more unchanging "being." While sharing
these lists, the groups revise their own, and using their final list as
a basis, discuss and negotiate the psychological profundity of the narrative's
characters.
» Narrative structure (Schofer)
Before reading a text, give
students information about the protagonist and a few telling moments from
the narrative. Then, in small groups, students write brief narratives
in the third person - one group describes the person or situation in general,
other groups focus on key or telling moments. After sharing each
group's work, students discuss how all of these pieces should be combined
into one coherent narrative. After reading the text students can
compare their own structure to that of the text and the effectiveness of
each.
» Narrative structure: Long
texts (Schofer)
After students have read
and analyzed part of the text and before they finish reading the entire
text, they write their own endings, justifying how what they have read
up until that point supports their conclusions.
» Personalized negotiation
of meaning and close reading (Iandoli)
Students begin by discussing
in small groups general and personalized questions about the text and characters
(Why did Bob do this? Did Sue have a choice or was she forced to
kill Sally? What would you have done in Billy's situation?
Why didn't Billy do that?). After sharing these ideas, they move
on to passage-specific questions (How is the emotional effect created in
this passage? How does the use of verbs and adjectives affect your
reading? How do the sound effects contribute to the meaning?
How does all of this contribute to the effectiveness of the passage?).
Finally, they relate their personal and general reactions, and close readings
to the text as a whole, negotiating its theme and a group interpretation.
» Point of view
Students organize the narrative
according to its key moments, and then in groups choose one moment and
re-write it from a different perspective (a different character, a different
type of narrator). Each group then summarizes their own work for
the entire class, and after each summary, the class discusses how the new
point of view changes the specific moment and the narrative as a whole.
» Point of view and narrative
distance (Shofer)
Before reading a text, students
describe a room that reflects the person who inhabits it. Divide
the class into groups - one group taking the perspective of the person
who lives in the room, another taking the perspective of a visitor, and
another of someone who was in the room thirty years ago. |
