“Staging for Exploration”
WHAT’S ON FOR TODAY AND WHY:
By today’s lesson, students should have read chapters four through six. They will be placed into groups of five and asked to complete tasks with all their members. Students will be taking dialogue and prose, and setting up a stage direction. Through stage direction students will be able to see the conflict that takes place with coping. They will close read the characters and the passages and apply all of this to see how difficult it is for characters to live through this tragedy. By choosing the right actions and emotions for each character will show that students are grasping the idea of what is happening with the parents and Nico. In the first passage that the students stage, they will be able to understand that no matter what the parents and Nico try to do, like making the doctor “pay” for what he “did” or “didn’t” do, it will never bring back their daughter/sister. In the second passage, students will be able to explore the fact that even though strangers can share their experiences of loss, what Nico is going through, is her own unique and personal experience, which she must learn to cope with on her own. By implementing all their knowledge from prior chapters students will be able to culminate all they have learned in describing how the characters are emotionally unstable. Students will be able to see how much time, thought, and work goes into directing a particular scene. They will be able to understand how words may come alive when thought about in a different perspective. Students will become critical thinkers and begin judging situations and characters based on their words.
WHAT TO DO:
Today, students will be required to work in groups of five to figure out how they would act out a dialogue between two actors. Students will choose a director, and that person will act as a facilitator and making sure that the student’s ideas fit his desired goals in acting this particular scene out. Students will all be given the same dialogue, which takes place in chapter four between mom, dad, and Nico. At this point, students will be able to understand that no matter what the parents and Nico try to do, like in this passage sue the doctor that did not diagnose Margaret, it will never bring back their daughter/sister. It begins on the bottom of page 54 with “Dad said…” and ends on page 56 with the beginning of the new section. Students will be asked to think about what the actors will be doing while they are having this conversation. Students have to take into consideration the subtext and inflection and how they would interpret this particular scene. For example, in the first line when dad says “the guy’s a year from retirement,” actors may specify that dad rolls his eyes while he is saying this, or maybe he quickens his speech, or speaks extremely slow. Depending on how the students would like to interpret that line, and the whole dialogue, will determine what “dad” will be doing during this part. Students will be asked to go through each line in these three pages and think about what actions and movements the actors will be performing. They must also think about the costumes, the setting, the lighting, and the music. Basically, students will be told to think of it as if they were staging this scene for a movie or a play interpretation of this novel. After they have finished discussing their ideas with other group members, groups will be asked to share their ideas on the stage direction.
Students will then be asked to take a look at a piece of prose, and how just like dialogue, it may be staged as well. Students will be asked to turn to the bottom of page 75, with the line “Except that an average of two out of ten…” and ending on page 77 with the top paragraph, with the last word being “regret.” Students will be asked to read this to themselves and then sit in their group and discuss how they would stage this particular scene. They will be asked to use specific words to describe what Nico might look like when she is listening to all these people telling her stories of their loved ones. What might she be wearing, what does it look like in the bookstore. Students will be given about 10 minutes for this exercise and then asked to share some of their intellectual ideas.
For homework, students will be asked to take chapter six of their reading, and explore the significance of books in Nico’s life and theirs. The teacher will read the entire class this passage: “It was like being under a curse to spend all those hours in Goldengrove and not be able to read. Like being in prison, unable to escape into a book” (pg. 81). Students will be reminded how Nico also finds the poem that references her sister, which evokes a certain emotion on her. Students will be asked to think about how a book or a piece of text may be a medium of escape. They will then be required to think about a book, poem, or any type of text that they have read and been able to “escape” into. They will be asked to go on to this website: wallwisher.com (the teacher will have already started a wall for the class with a title, so the students just need to log on and post), and build their own class page, to show the text that helps them “escape.” Students will be encouraged to go on to google images and find one image that depicts what the text is about or represents how the text makes them feel when they are reading it. They will be asked to post a sticky with this image on wallwisher and underneath the picture, describe in 30 characters or less, how the text/image they have chosen aids in helping them to “escape.” They will also be asked to read chapters seven.
HOW DID IT GO?
Did the students participate and give examples of how they think the actors might be acting during the passage? Did the students work with each group member to evaluate their ideas and reasoning for their choices? Did the directors agree or disagree with their group members based on their interpretation of the scene and the characters up to this point in the novel? Did students understand that dialogue and prose may be all acted out and that in order to act it out, students must think of the movements, emotions, and words of each character?
