Storytelling Continues... (4/18/11)

Monday’s class was filled with activities. We first started off doing a group activity by rearranging our seats in chronological order based on each person’s birthdates. Then we grouped up to do a story telling activity. Each person was instructed to select two random items they had and lay them out on the table. Our group had four people and so we had eight items total. Those eight items were a comb, lip balm, a leopard print wallet, ruler, sketch book, green flashlight, peach fusion tic tacs, and salad flavored pretzel snack. We were given 15 minutes to put together a great story and we had to incorporate our eight items into the story. It was a difficult start but once we came up with ideas, our story began to develop. We tried to stick to the normal elements a story has, which are to have a protagonist, an antagonist, theme, plot, conflict, and a resolution. We came up with a fantasy theme and gave our protagonist and antagonist names. From what we had to work with it was a good story. As for storytelling, I was the one who told our story. I felt like I didn’t do as good as a job as I could have. I may not be a good storyteller, but it is something that I know I need to work on. All the other groups also had great stories to tell. I enjoyed listening to all of them. They were all creatively awesome. Each story was very different. I remember the first story was a crime/murder story. The second story involved a chase between a thief and the victimized woman.  The last story was something out of the twilight zone. It was science fiction themed and very well told. It had a paranormal theme to it.

After our storytelling activity, we went over our homework assignment. It was to choose one phrase and then pick ten images that would change the meaning of that phrase. I chose the phrase “Never give up.” But I didn’t do a good job in changing the meaning of the phrase with the images I chose. The images I chose still related to the phrase, it didn’t quite change the meaning. I may not have entirely understood the assignment. As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one in class who didn’t understand. The whole class didn’t quite get the concept of the assignment. Some of our classmates’ works that we went over in class were able to change the meaning of the phrase, but only in a few images. Not all ten images changed the meaning of the phrase. Maybe at most three of the ten images changed the meaning. Because we didn’t do the assignment correctly, our homework is to redo this assignment and turn it in the following Monday. For some reason this assignment seems really challenging to me. I think that I need to take a different approach on how to do this assignment. I first started off with choosing a phrase and then the ten images that went with it. But this time around, I’ll choose the ten images first and then think of a good phrase.  This may or may not make a difference but at least I’m changing my process. It may just be beneficial for me in doing this.