Crossing the Threshold
I thought an explanation/discussion of a couple of assignments may be pertinent:
(am I speaking like a Lit teacher yet?)
Most of the assessments are based around essays, as the curriculum documents insist on; they’re either extended out-of-class essays or in class essays, so nothing too spectacular there.
The three that aren’t are the ones I want to look at a little closer.
At least one task must be an oral task. However, I don’t really like speeches which are about a subject. For instance, all the time you’re watching presentations, are you truly listening to content? And really, where’s the skill in that? I like speeches which have a point to them, where the rhetorical skills of the student has some kind of purpose. And far too often, an oral task throws out the student’s overall marks, especially when you have to take into account the examination has no oral component.
So I’ve tried to be a little creative with the oral task. Their task needs to be about Frankenstein and needs to be a little bit of a performance piece where they create a PowerPoint with images that symbolise the ideas of Romanticism and Frankenstein. As a study guide, I’m going to try to give them copies of the brilliant graphic novel (and it’s a graphic novel, not a comic or trade paperback) called Frankenstein’s Womb. It’s a mystical bio of Mary Shelley’s visit to a castle that inspired her novel. It’s a great examination of the novel’s themes and position between Romanticism and Modernism. Warren Ellis, one of the great comic writers from England wrote it. Absolutely awesome.
A new element of the course is the creative component. I think it’s a good idea. Try to get the students to explore the idea of literature from the other side. What I’ve decided to do is to try to combine it with revision and have two assignments at the end of the year.
The first task is to take a scene from one of the texts and change its genre. Here I mean “genre” as in “form", as defined by the syllabus. So they take a poem, for example, and rewrite it as a play. This will help their knowledge of a specific text and then two text types. I’m wondering if I should assign them random texts and text types so they may get out of their comfort zones.
The next task I pretty much stole from a dozen different sources. They have to rewrite a scene from a marginalised character’s perspective. Basically their version of The Wide Saragossa Sea. I reckon this’d help their knowledge of a text, characterisation and multiple readings.
Waddaya reckon?
(am I speaking like a Lit teacher yet?)
Most of the assessments are based around essays, as the curriculum documents insist on; they’re either extended out-of-class essays or in class essays, so nothing too spectacular there.
The three that aren’t are the ones I want to look at a little closer.
At least one task must be an oral task. However, I don’t really like speeches which are about a subject. For instance, all the time you’re watching presentations, are you truly listening to content? And really, where’s the skill in that? I like speeches which have a point to them, where the rhetorical skills of the student has some kind of purpose. And far too often, an oral task throws out the student’s overall marks, especially when you have to take into account the examination has no oral component.
So I’ve tried to be a little creative with the oral task. Their task needs to be about Frankenstein and needs to be a little bit of a performance piece where they create a PowerPoint with images that symbolise the ideas of Romanticism and Frankenstein. As a study guide, I’m going to try to give them copies of the brilliant graphic novel (and it’s a graphic novel, not a comic or trade paperback) called Frankenstein’s Womb. It’s a mystical bio of Mary Shelley’s visit to a castle that inspired her novel. It’s a great examination of the novel’s themes and position between Romanticism and Modernism. Warren Ellis, one of the great comic writers from England wrote it. Absolutely awesome.
A new element of the course is the creative component. I think it’s a good idea. Try to get the students to explore the idea of literature from the other side. What I’ve decided to do is to try to combine it with revision and have two assignments at the end of the year.
The first task is to take a scene from one of the texts and change its genre. Here I mean “genre” as in “form", as defined by the syllabus. So they take a poem, for example, and rewrite it as a play. This will help their knowledge of a specific text and then two text types. I’m wondering if I should assign them random texts and text types so they may get out of their comfort zones.
The next task I pretty much stole from a dozen different sources. They have to rewrite a scene from a marginalised character’s perspective. Basically their version of The Wide Saragossa Sea. I reckon this’d help their knowledge of a text, characterisation and multiple readings.
Waddaya reckon?
posted by Nutshell King at 11:31 PM
1 Comments:
This semester I'm teaching undergrads that writing from the perspective of a marginal character is a way to highlight multiple readings, so I hope you are right 'cause that's what I'm telling them.
You have made me go and look up the Wide Sargasso Sea, another book I haven't read, and it sounds really interesting. I might try to read it. They did it on the First Tuesday Book Club once, I actually remember seeing that now: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/firsttuesday/s2842760.htm
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