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Literature Study Post-16 II
Activities with student teachers
Activities addressing others' interpretations
- 'Force' students to adopt a particular reading or point of view, e.g. after reading a poem brainstorm key themes/ideas. Then students in groups prepare a short storyboard/script for a TV presentation of the poem for a fictitious BBC series 'The Little Read'. Different groups asked to focus on a different theme in their storyboard.
- Alternatively, script/adapt extracts from novel, write a newspaper editorial from a left/rightwing newspaper.
- Play 'What's My Line' – students adopt different perspectives when reading a poem and offer a reading. Can be done as a quick 'game' in groups, or developed into a larger scale classroom debate. A straightforward approach is to read a World War 1 poem, with students taking position of volunteer, conscript, general, etc..... or a 'theory' version might assign roles of 'structuralist', 'Marxist', 'feminist', etc.. critic to each student. In each case students receive a card with a very brief pen portrait of their character/position and then read a text from that perspective
- Play Literary 'Just a Minute'. A range of cards with provocative statements about the text place on middle of table. Student picks up card and tries to talk for a minute (without hesitation, repetition etc..) in support of that view. Students can challenge hesitations, etc....
- Use hotseating of characters to investigate the different perspectives characters within a text have on a particular event. Use this to inform students' own sense of alternative readings
 
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