This activity seeks to test students on the extent to which they understand the motivations and characteristics of the person they have chosen to role-play as. Simultaneously, the activity will familiarize the class with the different scenes chosen by their classmates.
Based on a selected text, students will have to write a
passage of 500 words from the perspective of a particular character, expanding
specific scenes, in first-person narration. For instance, if they are using the
text “Sold” by Patricia McCormick, they can choose to elaborate on one of the
vignettes and furnish it with greater detail while keeping to the integrity of
the character and setting. Another example would be re-writing a scene from another character's perspective. In "Fasting, Feasting", Arun chances upon Melanie lying in her own vomit. Students can attempt to role-play as Melanie, and follow her thought process behind the entire ordeal in a way faithful to how Desai has portrayed her. Through this exercise, students will be given the
space to explore, among others, the following questions: How do their chosen characters
talk? What goes through their minds? Do they use flowery language? What is the
tone of voice that they would use? Why have they done what they did? This Character Perspective Chart (http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson267/chart.pdf)
will be useful in scaffolding the thinking process behind constructing their
respective short passages.
After the writing exercise, students will showcase their
short passages to their classmates in a gallery walk format, whereby the class
will walk around to read their classmates’ work and make a guess as to which
character their classmates have impersonated. At the end of the gallery walk,
students will vote on which passage they thought was the most well-written, as
well as which was the most indicative of their characters.
They will be graded based on both 1)the likeliness/accuracy
of the character portrayal (greater percentage) as well as 2)the number of
correct guesses made by their classmates as to who their characters are (fun
factor).
Hi Jia Min, understanding character is definitely an important part of understanding literature. This sounds like an interesting as well as useful activity for getting the students to stand in their characters' shoes. Thanks for the example from Fasting, Feasting.
ReplyDeleteHi Jia Min, this idea sounds fun and feasible! I've observed that characterization is something students really enjoy. The length of the write-up could be adjusted to suit learners of different needs and abilities -- 500 words might be too heavy for Lower Secondary students. The gallery walk component is great, and students can use coloured pens and other fancy decorative material they like. They could even draw a little cartoon of their character too. Alternatively, students could also upload their write-ups on a class blog to save curriculum time, especially if the teacher wants to focus on the role play.
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