Goals

 

Details

Duration: N/A

Assessments: Student writing

 

Description

This activity serves three primary purposes: to provide students with an opportunity to improve their creative writing skills, to promote exploration of creative "voice", and to provide students with the means of making a deeper connection to his/her assigned character.

This assignment pushed our students to think critically about their characters' motives and realities. For example, when we are introduced to the character of Lady Macbeth, we learn that she is full of voracity, yet we have no idea how she came to be that way. We asked students to write their characters' life stories by focusing on one or two specific "life-altering" events. Students created these "events" and then reflected, in the voice of their characters, how these events shaped characters' lives and everyday realities.

Character Narrative
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Macbeth: Interpretation (film)
Group project for exhibition night using film as a medium to convey a Communist interpretation of Macbeth....
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Author Reflections

We found that students struggled with the "one moment in time" concept...some of them wrote summaries of the events of their characters' lives rather than focusing on one or two life-altering events. We did create mini-lessons on creative writing techniques (i.e. starting a story in the middle of conflict, using the five senses, showing not telling, etc.), it would be beneficial to build these more concretely in to the overall project unit before giving students this assignment.