I promised a post on guided imagery for teaching Lord of the Flies, so voila!
In simplest terms, guided imagery or guided visualization is a pre-reading or during reading strategy used to help students form a mental picture of what they will read or are reading so that they will better understand and remember it. It encourages active reading, where students are able to comprehend and become engaged with what they are reading rather than “letting it go in one ear and out the other.â€
Before we begin reading Lord of the Flies, my students complete a Survival Challenge, where they pretend they’ve crashed on a deserted island, and, as part of the assignment, they choose a leader for their group. Then, after we’ve read three chapters of Lord of the Flies, I like to use a guided imagery exercise to have my students stop and think about the predicament the boys are in on the island once the initial shock and excitement have worn off. Specifically, I want those students who were not chosen as leaders of their groups to think in terms of what they would do as leaders in that situation, had they been chosen.
So, I dim the lights, and ask them to sit back and relax for a minute and just listen while I read the following:
Close your eyes. Imagine that you and the rest of the people in this class have crashed on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, just like the boys in Lord of the Flies. The island itself is beautiful, with fine white sand beaches, blue-green waters, an abundance of fruit trees, and birds in any number of vivid colors. The weather on the island is humid, almost too hot, but you’ve figured out that if you take an afternoon nap in the shade of the jungle, you miss the worst of the heat. Lately, late afternoon swims as the heat of the sun begins to fade have become your favorite part of being stuck on the island. Plus, you have way more free time than you ever had at home, and Mom and Dad aren’t there to nag you about your less-than-impressive grades.
Not that life is carefree, however. You’ve been elected leader of the group, which is more weight on your shoulders than you thought it would be. You’ve been told that you have a natural talent for leading, and the class did vote for you unanimously, but the 24/7 aspect of the job wears on you. Sometimes you don’t know what the best thing to do is, and everyone always expects you to have the right answers.
It’s hard.
More than anything, your goal as a leader is to get everyone off the island. It’s okay for a while, but you’ve got friends at home that you miss, Homecoming is in just over a month, and you really don’t want to have to retake your freshman year. But, it seems like everyone else is starting to forget about home. Every time you call a meeting, they complain about having to go. When you try to talk during the meetings, some of the kids ignore you or start talking to each other. Most of the kids sleep in the mornings instead of working, even though they also take long naps in the afternoons. Many complain about being cold at night sleeping out in the open, but almost everyone makes excuses for why they can’t help with the huts. Two of the kids keep getting sick and they complain about it constantly. When you try to tell them that it may have to do with the yellow, oval-shaped fruit that they keep eating from the trees on the far side of the island, they get mad at you. Three of the girls are always arguing about who gets to sleep where, because one of them snores but won’t admit to it. It seems like everyone fights all the time, and they want you to decide who’s in the right, but every time you side with one person, the other person gets mad at you.
Quite honestly, you’re starting to privately wonder if you’ll ever get off the island. In public, of course, you assure everyone that it’s just a matter of time until you get rescued. And most days, you still believe it. But at night, during those dark, lonely 3:00 AM hours when everyone seems to be able to sleep except you, you become afraid that perhaps this island is all that your future holds. How will anyone find you, anyway? There must be a million of these uninhabited islands out here. Plus, you’re assuming that your parents are NOT assuming that everyone died in the crash or shortly thereafter. Who’s to say that anyone’s even looking for you? Who’s to say there’s even any hope at all of EVER getting off the island? Who’s to say that someday, in the not-too-distant future, you’ll stop caring about getting off yourself?
While the details vary slightly, this is essentially the dilemma that Ralph, the protagonist, faces, the struggle to keep the long-term goal of escaping from the island in the forefront of everyone’s minds. After I finish reading this, I ask students to write a response detailing what their concerns and struggles as leaders would be, and then we discuss these responses. I’ve used it several times, and it leads to some good written responses and often to some fascinating class discussions.
Stay tuned; Julius Caesar lessons are coming shortly. 