Most modern day fairy tales end with "and they lived happily ever after", but that gets tiring after a while. In this lesson we learned the perfect recipe for not so happily ever after- a tragic story.
We watched Wile E. Coyote to see how a tragic tale is told in a carton. How the author puts Wile on the highest cliff so that his fall would be that much more epic. The goal of today was to create a nearly perfect character who only had one flaw and was missing one thing in their life. Then to write a story where the flaw gets in the way of the one thing they want in life. For example: the handsome, rich prince was prideful, he had everything he wanted but love. So he goes off in search of a princess worthy of him, but of course his pride will get in the way of loving anyone but himself. We also started our stories off with a warning to our readers about how truly tragic our story will be.
Students should have fun with this lesson, it isn't meant to be taken too seriously. The skill learned from this lesson is character development, and learning how to add conflict into our stories. Without conflict there would be no story, no hero, no overcoming adversity and becoming stronger, and no happy endings!
The kids in my younger class are very excited about next week. We will be building forts in class. I told them that all their building materials have to fit in a pillow case. They will be working in teams. Please don't send them with extra food, this isn't a party, we will be writing in our forts.
No comments:
Post a Comment