Drama and understanding

I have always stuck my nose up to acting out scenes from a play or book. I always felt like I didn't know enough to really portray the character well. And then we participated in the drama for class last Monday. I must say, it did help me get into the mindset of the character a lot. I began to really feel for the character that I was embodying. I was able to relate to the character's struggle. I definitely think that this takes a higher level of comprehension than most middle school or early high schoolers are capable of, but I think it could be very effective none the less.

I really enjoyed the activities outside of just acting out some scenes. It moves away from the two dimensional view of characters that is common in short stories. Students can find a deeper understanding of character's motivations. So the grocery store owner in the poem we read. A quick shallow analyses of him shows a mean father who doesn't really care about his family, he just wants to make money at his store. But, through process drama, you may discover a loving and devoted husband and father who is just trying to provide for his family and keep their main source of income.

Supplement or Replacement?

Graphic novels... should they be used to supplement or to replace canonical literature. From my experience, they can greatly help at risk students understand the classic texts. Students may have trouble picturing how a scene would look or may need a visual cue to help them understand little parts of the plot that may not be as obvious in pure text form. As a general rule though, adaptations of classic texts have a tendency to leave out parts of a story. The graphic novel adaption of Portrait of Dorian Grey leaped from Dorian as an innocent youth to his corrupt adult life, skipping over his development and loss of innocents. This gives less of a portrait of Dorian Grey and more of an overview. (bad pun, I know)

Also, other novels like A Wrinkle In Time are challenging to change into a visual format. The story has a scene that takes place in a two dimensional universe and another universe that the characters cannot seem to describe in human speech. This means that both of these universes would be very challenging to draw.

Last Week's Project

After talking with Sammi and Emily, we decided that going into class on Monday, we did not have much hope for our video. All of us had trouble story boarding our ideas and utilizing the camera shots to maximize the message we were trying to send. It wasn't until we actually worked together that things began to come together. I realized that we were doing a really good job of working together. One person would offer an idea, the other two would listen, comprehend, and then offer an advancement of the idea.

At the beginning of the project, I really didn't think it was going to go so well, but I really think that our video is pretty good. Little recommendation, read Alexie Sherman's short story on D2L. It is a quick read and will make the video a lot less confusing. My girlfriend watched the movie before she read the story and had no clue what was going on. After she read the story though, she thought it was really good.