The Idea of Recreation
Turn the Familiar into the Sinister
Idea number 23 in the list given by a certain Adrien Alsobrook to his students was to turn a familiar narrative into a sinister one. I can see this being done in formative assessments over a few weeks where students first get familiar with the style of the text through analysis and then get exposed to the elements of Gothic tales, perhaps through a few short stories.
Here's my brainwave (spontaneous and still in need of adjustments)
Step 1: Present selected text to students and teach them to identify the style of the writer. This could be done in a simple table form, with columns for observations and
evidence.
Step 2: Students to question author's style.
E.g. How does the style contribute to the effect that the writer conveys? Is it effective for the genre that the writer is writing for?
Students could present this in an oral presentation - they dramatize the text to show
the effect given by the text.
Step 3: Students are presented with a de-composed version of the text. The style has been changed and students would have to study the difference between them. Students are to then write their own de-composed version of the text.
Step 4: Students are given 3 Gothic tales and taught to identify the elements and styles of
Gothic tales.
Step 5: Final assessment - Students will show their understanding of the text by turning the original selected text into a Gothic tale.
Thoughts
Recreation of a text as a mode of assessment appeals to me because I like that it does not have a set answer that students can memorise from somewhere. It tests creativity and spontaneity, skills which I think students need to survive in today's world. It would 'force' educators to rethink the way they teach and the curriculum because they cannot teach students to write in a certain way to score that A. I realized from one of our tutorials that students could learn "academia-speak" - to use certain words in a certain fashion to appeal to the type of answer needed. I don't like the idea that students can learn to be exam-smart in this sense. Then we're testing them on how well they learn exam techniques instead of the knowledge of creativity and the beauty of expression, which to me is Literature. At the end of the day, I would love to know that my students do well in Literature because they can create and write their own literature.
I like the idea of adding shocking twists to their common stories, especially since the students I've taught so far all seem to like horror and scifi stories! It would bring some life to the curriculum-assigned texts they would have been going through over and over and over.. though I think this might be limited in their implementation as students must have a rather good grasp of language, not to mention a decent amount of exposure to genres before they will be able to reinterpret the text. That being said, I think they can still do this recreation activity for other (simpler) genres and activities, like changing a happy ending to a sad ending.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, when students are able to make jokes about and reimagine their texts as their own, we should feel some sense of pride and satisfaction! :)
I agree with you that we want students to read and to love Literature for its own sake, and creative writing is a good way of getting students to learn more about the style of particular pieces. I do think that creative writing should be a basic part of our instruction rather than an add on if the students have time.
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