Zodiac Characterization

Native American Signs

The Western Signs

 What's your sign?

I've seen a lot of really fun lessons be done with the zodiac. The ones I usually see are when people use the discussion of different star signs in a conversation class 

My favorite way is to get students to compare a character to different astrological signs. Now, you can do this any zodiac system you like. The Chinese zodiac signs, the Native American zodiac signs, or the  Western zodiac signs.

I enjoy teaching this lesson with the Chinese zodiac for a couple reasons.

1. I enjoy showing students different cultures. As my students here in Mexico do not have much exposure to Asian culture

The Chinese Zodiac

2. Also, in the case of The Body we know approximately when the characters were born. That means I can lower it down to only two signs, which means there's less reading for the students to do.

What are my students actually doing?

Step 1. They get assigned a character
Step 2. They read about the Ox and the Rat sign.
Step 3. They underline the parts of the descriptions that they feel describe the character.
Step 4. They summarize the descriptions
Step 5. They decide on if he is a rat or an ox.

Normally 1-5 are done on their own. Once they've made their decision I divide the class up by characters.

Step 6. Discuss why they felt the character should be that sign. Compare thoughts with the other students who have the character. See if a consensus on what sign fits best can be reached.
Step 7. Students share their findings with the class. Listen to what other characters are different signs.
Step 8. On their own students find support from the story that matches the descriptions of the sign.
Step 9: Students write a paragraph on why their character is a certain sign.


Voila! This works GREAT at helping my students find evidence to support their arguments. This is something that students tend to struggle with and this assignment is an easy way for them to find specific examples in the text that relate to what they are arguing.

If you're interested in using a worksheet that has already been made then you can go over to TPT for this worksheet. While it was designed for use with The Body it can be used with any characters from any story.  It includes

• A description of the rat and ox personalities
• Space for students to summarize the descriptions
• A graphic organizer to help students sort through their evidence
• Space for them to write a paragraph
• A sample worksheet completed using examples from The Body

Until June 1st I am having it on sale for only $1.00! On June 2nd it will go back to being $1.50. 

Video Games as Literature Assignments

My students are big into technology. I don't think that is really rare in students nowadays, but this is one of the first classes that has been so vocal about it! When I let them know that their assignments can be done virtually they literally tell me, "We love technology"

As a result this year when I started the, "Adaptation Project" I wasn't surprised at all that students were excited. They usually do a great job (as seen in last year's blog post), but this year a group of students asked if they could make an adaptation video game instead of a standard video. Always up to let my students be creative I said yes! The only extra was that they would need to make a, "making of the video-game" video since one of the requirements was that I hear voices.
In the end they came up with this:

Keep in mind that they did create a game! What you are watching now is me "playing" the game (I recorded it).

Interested in having your students create their own video games? Well, these don't involve that much English but Sploder is a good place to start. It doesn't require much skill and can be personalized. Later your students can explain why they chose to depict the story a certain why.

If you have had your students coding (via something like the hour of code) you could probably get more complex.

What do you think? Is an assignment like this suited for your students' levels? How would you change it? What sites would you use?

Tweet on behalf of a character

The cellular view (click the photo to view it bigger)

When my students read stories I like to give them different assignments to keep things interesting. For example, I may have them draw a character, make a soundtrack for a chapter, or create a Twitter account for a character.

"Pretend a character had a cell phone. Create a fake Twitter account for this character (on paper, not online). This should include a username, picture, description/bio, and FOUR tweets (one from each chapter). The tweets should make it clear that 1. You read the chapter and 2. You understand the character. You can tweet what they were thinking, feeling, or hoping."

This student used stickers! (click it to view it bigger)

Another artsy one! (click to view it bigger)

The results are usually entertaining. The students enjoy making them, and I think they show more comprehension than a simple summary. Rather than telling me what they read, they are inferring and predicting what one of the characters thinks about it. These higher level thinking skills are key!

I love how some students made the project look like their smartphone. That is, after all, how they usually view Twitter.

Some got really artistic with it and used their  creativity to make different designs, and pictures they felt would best suit the character.

Chris Chambers computer made account (click to view it bigger)

Others preferred to use sample layouts (available online) and make their Twitter account on the computer (in Microsoft Word, Paint, or Photoshop)

What is really fun about this is sometimes students look outside of the main characters and choose to focus on a lesser known character. This really let's them use their creativity and develop a character; sometimes further than the author had the opportunity to do.

A lesser seen character. Milo's Twitter. (click to view it bigger)

In this post you can see an example of each "type" of submission.

Each one shows a knowledge of the character. For example, one student chose to give Teddy a camouflage background knowing he admired his military father.

The student who selected Milo Pressman made his avatar a ferocious dog since Milo is the owner of Chopper.

Many of the students picked clever usernames for their accounts such as: GordonInvisibleBoy since Gordie says his parents always ignore him.

In short, even though these projects are shorter than say, a summary of each chapter. I feel like I can still assess who did the reading.

You can easily adapt this to a short story, or change the frequency by making them tweet more per chapter.

I also know teachers who have students make these accounts online and interact with one another.

While that may be an option for me in the future, right now privacy issues and students with varying levels of Internet access prohibit this.

Nonetheless, I think doing it on paper still gets the same results! If you get a chance to do this (or do something similar now) let me know in the comments. I'd love to see what you do differently, or what worked (and didn't) for you!

Interesting in doing this activity with your students? You can download a copy of the assignment (with examples and a rubric) on Teachers Pay Teachers.(If you haven't signed up yet you can register for free here)

Dreams and Symbols

 In my class we are reading Stephen King's novella "The Body." In one chapter of the book the narrator specifically discusses a dream he had.

Today's class we talked about  the significance of dreams and different ways to interpret them.

There are SO many different ways to do this lesson, but this was how I did it today. You  can easily do a lesson about dreams without using, "The Body," and it ties in quite nicely if you choose to do the Dream Flag project later.

WARMER
To start I had created this little slips of paper. I basically made note of different idioms, songs, and movies that invove dreams.

I divided them in half and gave each student part of a phrase. They had to try and find someone who made sense with theirs.

NOTE: There were technically different "correct" answers. You can grammatically say, "Be in a dream," but it doesn't have any special meaning in English.

After a few minutes I gave the students some clues.

For example, "On of them is about a baseball movie with Kevin Costner," "One of them is something you say to someone when their dream is impossible." etc.

After a few  more minutes I went through the numbers and let the students read their phrase together. If they correctly made an English phrase I congratulated them and asked them what it meant. Then as a class we went over connotation and denotation. If you want to do more activities with the dream words check out the vocabulary post.

Finally, my students were ready to start the lesson. I like this warmer because it gets them moving, thinking about dreams, focusing on different idioms, and thinking in English. It can be done in five minutes, or you can spend more time on it if you wish.

READING
As a class, we read the story out loud (try popcorn reading!). From time to time we stopped and went over different words or discussed what the author meant. If you're reading chapter 15 you'll know it is when the boys are camping in the woods and they think they hear a ghost!

We discuss words they may not know and what the author is mentioning (cats being in heat for instance).

The chapter ends with his dream. We discuss the different parts to be sure that students understand the essence, then we talk about possible symbols. What does drowning usually mean? Why is Chris drowning etc.

SYMBOLS
When I was in University I backpacked a lot. Sometimes, as a way to make friends, I would walk fellow backpackers through these imaginary woods. As they walk through the woods in their brain you ask them specific questions. later you explain that these questions were asked to figure out more about the person. I'd explain what certain things symbolized and even when people disagreed they enjoyed it.

There are a few different versions of this going around, but here's the version I like best. I made it into a PowerPoint with pictures to help students who may be stuck. We also learned a few new words like, "to wade through water" (which will actually come up later in, "The Body!" After students take the imaginary walk through the woods we discuss what else the objects could symbolize and whether or not they think this, "test" is accurate.

WRITING
In order to tie this back into, "The Body," we ended with the students wrote about one of the characters walks through the woods.

For example, "Gordie would walk through the woods with Denny. Even though Denny has passed away Gordie mentions him a lot through the story. I feel like Denny didn't change Gordie's life really until he died."

This helps students get used to writing explanations, dealing with different points of view, and reinforcing their understanding of characters in, "The Body."

Who's the character?

I don't like to give my students simple questions when we read stories. I like to make them think.

In addition to the plot and setting, one of the key aspects of any story is how the reader sees a character.

One assignment that I like to do is have them tell me what actor or actress they would like to play a character. They have to give me specific reasons like, "I think _______ should be played by ______ because in the story he's really a wimp and in his most recent movie he plays a wimpy guy." or "The author describes her as short and petite, so I think ______ would be a good actress."
It is also a way to get me to know what kind of movies and actors my students like. What I really like to do though is have them find five quotes from the story and use them to draw a picture of the character.

Here are some examples from the past students:

 

This is Chris, from Stephen King's, "The Body," I like this one because she really listened when I said it didn't need to just be physical traits. In the story we know Chris is abused, so she took a quote that discussed it and added band aids to his face and a bloody knee. A key point of the novella is that Chris stole his father's gun, so she took a quote about it and drew him with the gun.

 

 This is Mr. McClane from, Phillip K. Dick's, "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale." I like this because it was simply done and shows it isn't about being the best artist (I am not!) it is about finding the quotes and drawing what they tell you.

 

This was from the first year I taught at ITESM and the students read Rip Van Winkle. This student didn't take quotes so much as descriptive words, but it still shows a good example of "bringing the story to life."

Similar to my last post about popcorn reading, this is nothing new, but it is something fun that students enjoy and keeps them from answering simple questions, "Who is Chris?" "How old are the boys" "What city do they live in?" Rather than having your students memorize, help them understand! 

You can buy this assignment (with two others and an alternative writing prompt for the students hwo hate drawing) at TeachersPayTeachers for LESS THAN $2.00! Complete with rubrics and examples.

"The Body" Final Project!

For most of the higher high school English classes the school has them read three short stories each semester. Rather than read three short stories this year I talked to my supervisor and had them read the abridged version of Stephen King's The Body throughout the semester.

I chose this story because the students are familiar with King, and this is one of his more unique works. I also felt the boys, who tend to be less interested in English, would get into the story, yet it wasn't "overly manly" in a way that would ostracize the girls.

I liked this version because it was at a level that was suitable for my students, did not contain the R rated language King's full length novella does(short of pussy which it does use often), and was short enough to be easily read during a semester (usually less than 1,500 words a week).

We did a lot of questions and projects throughout the semester, but my favorite was their final project. Throughout the semester we watched the movie Stand By Me which is based off the novella and discussed the differences and similarities between the movie and the story. (Note: the students and their parents were warned about the movie as the language earned the film an R rating.) When we finished the story and movie we watched other short adaptations (The Simpsons, The Family Guy and several other student made versions I found online). Then I gave them their final assignment where they essentially would make their own adaptation!

The "Storyboard" for the original story

This included: Storyboards / Timelines, Descriptions of character changes, a description of their overall concept and of course: the final project: a 5 minute adaptation!

The "storyboard" for their adaptation

First students made a timeline of the novella highlighting what they felt were the key scenes in the plot they would want to reproduce.

Then, Students were encouraged to create a "What if" question to make the adaptation:

What if the main characters were fish?

What if the main characters were female?

What if they lived nowadays?

What if they were all superheroes?

After they'd chosen their main "change" they'd extend this to the characters, setting, etc. 

Finally, they made their project and shared it with the class! Here's one example that lost points for being too short (I think due to time they left out a few parts they had previously planned on including), but still ended up being the class' favorite video when it came to voting!

What if it took place in space?
They adapted the characters and setting, but most of the overall plot stayed the same. If you've read "The Body" or seen "Stand by Me" you should be able to see the similarities in the video below (I suggest you watch it on the full screen setting). 

 

Why there's a train on the moon... I am still not sure, but this received FULL points for creativity!

You can see how they changed many things from the story; they explained this separately: For example they replaced the deer with a shooting star because: "instead of a deer, a shooting star will appear. Shooting stars are pretty and peaceful and a beautiful moment, just as the deer is for Gordie."

If your students are doing book reports these are great! In addition, I think, they are going higher up Bloom's taxonomy (creating, extrapolating, etc) instead of just telling. They have to understand why the deer is important to the plot, and find a relevant way to convert this to their plot. 


Want to try this yourself? You can download a freebie (including the rubric and the assignment) here and the full assignment here 

What about YOU? Have you used adaptations in the class before for a text or film? How have your students reacted? I'd love to hear about it.