The preworkshop tasks were based on the ideas of Gamble and Yates (2008) from the Chapter 'Narrative: narration and structure' in the book Exploring Children's Literature. We were required to choose two books that we had recently read and create a story shape for them, identify the relevant basic plots and discuss the narrative techniques used by the authors.
The main things that we discussed and learnt from the reading is the fact that stories can have more than one basic plot. For example, The Hunger Games has a dual-plot consisting of 'tragedy' and 'voyage and return'. We also shared our story shapes which all consisted of a setting, action building to climax, climax, solution to a problem and a conclusion. Lastly, we talked about the large range of narrative techniques used by the authors. These included:
- Story shapes
- Suspense
- Conflict
- First person
- Present tense
- Coda
- Omniscient narration
- Rhyme
- Repetition
- Epistolary
It was good to discover new meanings of terms used, thus increasing our literacy. Alex
ReplyDeleteHi Kirsty! I really enjoyed reading Gamble and Yates (2008) from the Chapter 'Narrative: narration and structure' in the book Exploring Children's Literature. My favourite technique that we learnt about was story shaping. I like the idea that you can shape every story and I quite enjoyed that different endings could be represent in different ways. I also beleive that this would be a really good idea to help your students connect with the book they are reading, as this will make them think about what it is they are reading and how they are able to represent it. I also learnt alot of definitions in the tut. Most of the words i have never heard of, however most of them I have read about before, but had never heard of there actual names.
ReplyDeleteTeresa.
From this reading I liked the story shape and how it was a simplistic method of describing what the plot and story line of a book were. The finding definitions task was beneficial as it allowed us to discover new words and their meanings and then translate them into our own words and sense. Also the fact that there were base plots described made me think about what books do not follow the list of blogs and have found it really difficult to do so.
ReplyDeleteEmma.
Hi, This was an very informative reading! I liked the way we analysed the shape of the stories we read, it has made me look at the story shape of my author study. I really liked looking at the narration from three different perspectives and discussing this as a group. I have definately got to start using some of the words we researched in the tutorial.
ReplyDeleteHeather.
I think too that learning about the story shapes were beneficial in order to see the plot and I had never done that before. I like that these will help students who are more visual learners to be able to gain some understanding of where the story goes! Students may be able to start with a story shape and be able to construct a narrative from that shape as a possible technique to use in writing a story.
ReplyDeleteAlex