Monday, March 4, 2013

ENG1D -

Did you get that inferring paragraph about The Other Family in to Mr. The Lobb?

Did you get your paragraph back?

If you did, there is a process you can undergo:

check the comments -

don’t retell the story - a reference just needs to be a short recap of the KEY THING that you need to show - in this story it is the bit about the art and the mother’s response - dark skinned family, maybe Indian, Mother is offended, kids responds

Need to make a better connection - you need to better EXPLAIN the way that the reference proves your point - eg you need to show that the kid is reacting to a definition of normal that doesn’t fit her - the mother notices, and the kid doesn’t and the kid is picking up unintended racism

Watch simple errors - that means you didn’t check for spelling and grammar

The Parts of a Short Story

Plot

a plot has a beginning, middle and end
this is one of the easiest elements of a story to understand
when you talk about a movie after you see it, you usually talk about the plot
WHAT HAPPENS in a story is the plot

What can you say about plot in a story? How can you discuss it without simply retelling it?

Here is a little plan to follow when looking at a story’s plot:

Where is the conflict? Plots are problems and possible solutions
How do the story events AFFECT the characters? Do the characters PUSH the story or does the story PULL the characters?

When a character has to REACT to a story point, he/she is being PULLED into a new place or being changed by the story. FATE DRIVEN (DESTINY, RANDOM, COINCIDENCE)

When a character does something that causes the story to change, or another character to change, this is PUSHING the plot. CHARACTER DRIVEN

3. What is the sequence? What happens first? What does that set into motion? How did we get to this particular end? A+B+C= a story - the whole thing leads to a RESOLUTION - evaluating a story by the ending is a good idea


Setting

setting is TIME and PLACE for the story events
also MOOD and ATMOSPHERE
you can talk about what the setting “gives the story” - some places and times add a great deal to the story
ie The Other Family - is set in a place where white people tend to be in the majority - this is crucial to the ideas of the story
eg Spiderman NEEDS NYC in order to be effective.

Character

in a short story, there is usually one absolutely critical element that makes the story even BE a story
there is a person (the main character) who is in a crisis moment that is a moment of life-changing decision
another key - that main character has a MOTIVATION that drives the story and their decision making - WHY does the character do X? - we need to dig deep when we think about these things

Theme
see last day’s notes - re: meaning and HUMAN VALUES and UNIVERSAL IDEAS
themes in stories are about ideas that affect ALL PEOPLE
this is called UNIVERSALITY - something that is universal is known to all of us, affects us all and is understandable

When you are coming up with a PLAN for analysing a short story, you want to have questions that dig deeper and hit all THREE of the kinds of questions there are:

EXPLICIT - simple - direct from the text

IMPLICIT - how, why - you have to use your thinking to answer (50-50 between info from the text and from your brain)

MAKING CONNECTIONS - you need to apply your own knowledge almost completely in order to come up with the answer - you’ll need to use your background knowledge, maybe research, maybe your experience and opinion.

Checklist for the Short Story Summative

we form a group where EVERYONE HAS A TASK
we plan a rough outline of our short story analysis
we come up with a MINIMUM of 10 interesting and DEEP questions (or TASKS)
we did some research to see what other people do in analysing a short story
if we used something from online, we ADAPTED IT, not copied it
we showed Mr. The Lobb our rough outline and he checked it
we then made a POSTER of our PLAN
we received a short story
we UTILIZED the plan to analyse the story

Group 1

Courtney, Erin, Lauren, Robyn

Group 2

Jachelle, Rosie

Group 3

Kyle, Sean, Nick, Lee

Group 4

Abigail, Rachel, Julia

Group 5

Meghan, Ashley, Devon, Neil

Group 6

Caitlan, Caitlyn, Cole

Group 7

Laura, Laine, Cameron, Mitchell