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This final activity asks students to review the chapters, events and people they have discussed and to decide what they are carrying from each of them. When I did this, I asked them to choose only five items from their three lists and to describe in a bit of detail what they are still carrying (in terms of beliefs, self-image, perceptions, etc.) from that encounter. I made a two-column chart, with the left column the encounter (i.e., chapter, event or person) and the right column space for a discussion of that encounter, but you could easily just do this on plain paper.
As you do this, don’t focus on the psychological implications (that’s not really our job), but on how the characters in the novel are similar to them, how they are also carrying or will be carrying traces of their encounters, perhaps for the rest of their lives. Emphasize, also, that how those traces affect us (and the characters) will be a matter of interpretation, how we choose to view them or learn to view them.
As you read the novel, you might find opportunities to take a theme from a chapter and create an activity that will bring that theme to a personal level for the students. For example, as we read the chapter “In the Field,” we focused on who was really guilty for Kiowa’s death. I drew a web on the board, with Kiowa at the center, listing the people and instutitutions that were in some way responsible (ranging from Bowker, the young soldier and Kiowa, himself, to the American people who refused to see what was really happening in the war and allowed it to continue). After the chapter, I had students do the following:
- briefly describe a situation (good or bad, positive or negative) they were in,
- draw a web of people or institutions who could, in some way, be responsible for their situation (you could even include relationships between elements on the web),
- write a brief exploration in which they looked at who or what they felt was responsible.
To make it easier for students to do this (and to avoid reinforcing the guilt they probably already feel), I insisted that they exclude themselves from the list. My goal was not to make them feel responsible for their own lives, but to learn to see a bigger picture, how a number of people and things factor into any given situation at any given time. An extention of this could be to add to the web people who could help them resolve a negative situation or enhance a positive one.
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Untitled Document
This final activity asks students to review the chapters, events and people they have discussed and to decide what they are carrying from each of them. When I did this, I asked them to choose only five items from their three lists and to describe in a bit of detail what they are still carrying (in terms of beliefs, self-image, perceptions, etc.) from that encounter. I made a two-column chart, with the left column the encounter (i.e., chapter, event or person) and the right column space for a discussion of that encounter, but you could easily just do this on plain paper.
As you do this, don’t focus on the psychological implications (that’s not really our job), but on how the characters in the novel are similar to them, how they are also carrying or will be carrying traces of their encounters, perhaps for the rest of their lives. Emphasize, also, that how those traces affect us (and the characters) will be a matter of interpretation, how we choose to view them or learn to view them.
As you read the novel, you might find opportunities to take a theme from a chapter and create an activity that will bring that theme to a personal level for the students. For example, as we read the chapter “In the Field,” we focused on who was really guilty for Kiowa’s death. I drew a web on the board, with Kiowa at the center, listing the people and instutitutions that were in some way responsible (ranging from Bowker, the young soldier and Kiowa, himself, to the American people who refused to see what was really happening in the war and allowed it to continue). After the chapter, I had students do the following:
To make it easier for students to do this (and to avoid reinforcing the guilt they probably already feel), I insisted that they exclude themselves from the list. My goal was not to make them feel responsible for their own lives, but to learn to see a bigger picture, how a number of people and things factor into any given situation at any given time. An extention of this could be to add to the web people who could help them resolve a negative situation or enhance a positive one.