Saturday, November 27, 2010

Confession Anew

Hey guys!  Just wanted to let you know about an idea I had for my class.  In Dr. Givhan's class, we have weekly websites we are to visit to try to find one that will help us in our class.  One that I really liked was http://www.storyarts.org/, which is a website that gives you ideas for engaging students in reading.  They had an idea for a lesson called 1001 Nights Festival where you begin telling a story and stop at the most crucial point, much like Shahrazad in 1001 Arabian Nights.  The next day, you finish that one and begin another. 

I bought all three volumes of 1001 Arabian Nights and began reading them.  These stories are really short, so it shouldn't take too much time from your day if you want to use this idea.  I'm only planning on spending somewhere between 5-10 minutes per day to tell the stories.  During the stories we will discuss skills like allusions (Arabian Nights is full of allusions), symbolism, etc.  I ran the idea by a couple of my classes and they seemed pretty excited.  I'm planning on starting on Monday, and I will let you guys know how it turns out.  Happy reading until then!

By the way, I also bought The Complete Fairytales of the Brothers Grimm, which is really cool, too.  Most of my students have never heard the "real" version of the fairytales.  If you haven't read the original fairytales, or the 1001 Arabian Nights tales, you should!  You might have to edit some though...to keep it PG/PG13...

No comments:

Post a Comment