“Evoking Images Through the Use of Words”
WHAT’S ON FOR TODAY AND WHY:
The night before, students were asked to read Chapter One of Goldengrove. Today, students will be performing tableaux vivants based on their reading from last night. The teacher will give direction and be the facilitator of this activity. As a class, students will be asked to present a living picture of something that represents and interprets their understanding of an interaction among the characters. This will make the students close read the text in order to convey the emotions and the inner thoughts a character might be going through while portraying the context that they are in. It will bring their reading “alive.” The students will make the words on paper jump and move, with each of their movements. Students are analyzing, interpreting, and synthesizing the text and characters, and capturing this in one still picture. One picture will represent their understanding of what a scene will look like based on what the author has provided with words. Throughout the week, students will also be asked to take pictures with their phone or a digital camera at home, of something that reminds them of Nico and all the things that she is experiencing, physically or emotionally. By doing so, students will be turning to their own lives in search for a depiction of a character. Students will also be making a hypertext for homework. Students will be asked to choose a paragraph within chapter one that shows foreshadowing. This hypertext will illuminate their passage and show the teacher their close reading skills.
WHAT TO DO:
Students will take their seats and the teacher will ask for five volunteers to come to the front of the class that are willing to act and read. The teacher will ask for two boys and two girls for actors, and one person as a reader. After the students are in the front of the room, the teacher will then explain how the rest of the students will act as the directors of the class. The teacher will then explain about tableaux vivants and how they capture a living picture. The teacher will ask students to turn to page 11 when Aaron meets the parents for the first time. Students will be asked to read the passage quietly to themselves. The teacher will then explain how the actors will do what the directors tell them to. So it’s the responsibility of the class to direct the students. The teacher will act as a facilitator in this activity and play the part of an assistant. The teacher will explain how the movement and the expression of each actor is crucial, and if we didn’t have words to describe how we are feeling during this particular moment, we can only rely on the image. So it is the responsibility of the actors to depict emotion, and the directors, to stage that emotion. The students will be given five minutes to perform this interaction. The teacher will then ask the class to take out their cell-phones and take a picture of the tableaux vivant.
Students will then be asked to sit in their groups of five and come up with three tableaux vivant for the following two passages: One that begins on the bottom of page 3 and goes to the top of page four, when the family is doing yoga. This is the picture that Nico constantly refers to, students will analyze this passage and try to piece together a photo of them performing this activity. They will also be piecing together ideas on why this photo becomes so important in Nico’s life. The other passage is on page 19, it is when Nico runs home looking for Margaret and her mother screams at her to “go find her.” Students will first be asked to read the text quietly and then discuss in their groups on how they would capture a still life of these scenes. After they discuss and rehearse, students will be asked to share their tableaux vivants.
For homework, students will be asked to read chapters two and three. They will also be asked to take pictures either with a digital camera or their cell phones of what they believe would represent the character of Nico. Remember, that the pictures do not have to be of a person, it may be of an item. It is something that will represent the experiences Nico is going through whether emotionally or physically. Students will be asked to take pictures throughout the week, so that by Friday, they should have a collection. They will be asked to upload these pictures to their computer when they are done because we will be applying them to a project this weekend, so it is important for students to take these pictures if they want to successfully complete it. Students will also be asked to create a hypertext for homework. We will spend the last five minutes of the class looking at an example that I have done with a Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130. Students will be given a tutorial on how to hypertext and they will be given a choice of what paragraph they would like to illuminate. I will explain to the students the paragraph is their choice, as long as it is extracted from chapter one and reflects foreshadowing. Students will be required to either post a picture or video for each individual word. These hypertexts should be sent to me via e-mail and students will be reminded that this is something that they will not be graded; it is a purely fun assignment. However, late or no submission of this will result in a homework zero.
HOW DID IT GO?
Were the students engaged in the activity of creating tableaux vivants? Did the students consolidate what they learned in the beginning of the class as a whole, and applied it towards the end, by performing their own individual still life pictures? Are the students interpreting the relationship and the life that the family had before the tragic event? Did the students analyze the words and sentences in order to depict the emotions or mood of the scene?
