Monday, December 14, 2009

Holiday Reading -- Their Eyes Were Watching God




You have an opportunity to work ahead on this unit so that when we return we can go into a multimedia project studying video games as new narratives. Like Sonny's Blues, we are going to looking at Theme and Motif as important literary elements. These patterns in narrative are subtleties that reflect the ability of mature and talented writers.  As you read through this text, look at the narrator's voice--is it first or third person?

Is VOICE important here? How is language and and dialect important in helping us to understand place, time, and culture?


Syllabus and C level ILP

For this assignment, please do the study questions, and then be ready to create a board game. Here is an example of a novel that has been turned into a board game:


Recreate the character's journey through the novel and create wrong turns and snafus that still allow the player to advance to some end--you decide what the novel was about--was it about self-realization, liberation, civil rights, separatist colonies, ethnography, love? Look at the themes, setting, plot, motif, and characters and create a well-designed game board that embodies the storyline of the novel  that 2 - 8 can play.

Make sure that spaces on the board change with cards, and that the characters, places, symbols and imagery play key roles.

 The Jane Austin Pride and Prejudice Board Game



The Pride and Prejudice Board Game attempts to develop a thematic board game about Pride and Prejudice.

The central mechanic of the game is collection. The player controls a couple, suggesting that the couple that winds up marrying has this as their intended goal through the entire game. In the board game, navigation is central, and is the means for acquiring tokens. For the players, navigation enables a sense of vicarious exploration. It gives the player an opportunity to tour and visit the memorable locations from the book.
Instead of creating a procedural representation for the story conflicts in the game, it is likely that the players will create their own story variations as explanations for their actions. So, while the game does not represent the dynamics that happen in the story, the players can construct their own stories, based on their knowledge of the story world, and on what their characters are doing in the arena of the game itself.

This is a place to start

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Countdown to Break



Schedule for the coming days

Black American Voices


Friday
Dec. 11
Present Story Boards
Monday
Dec. 14
Quiz/ Complex Sent.
Tuesday
Dec. 15
Lackawanna Blues
Wednesday
Dec. 16
Lackawanna Blues
Thursday
Dec. 17
Lackawanna Blues
Friday
Dec. 18
Lackawanna Blues
  American Literature

Wednesday
Dec. 9
Mid-term compositions due/ last day for ILP
Thursday
Dec. 10
Writer’s workshop – 3 drafts of essay for work shop due/ sonny’s blues
Friday
Dec. 11
Final essay due for work shop/begin Sonny’s Blues **Answer preview /review questions
Monday
Dec. 14
Quiz
Tuesday
Dec. 15
/ Sonny’s Blues create framework for story board with substantiated “most important” scenes.
Wednesday
Dec. 16
Create images of scenes with quotes, lit elements, and text
Thursday
Dec. 17
Friday