{"id":2246,"date":"2013-01-30T21:58:25","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T01:58:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=2246"},"modified":"2013-01-30T21:58:26","modified_gmt":"2013-01-31T01:58:26","slug":"story-impressions-julius-caesar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=2246","title":{"rendered":"Story Impressions for Julius Caesar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this month, I mentioned that I begin my unit on Julius Caesar <\/i>with several pre-reading activities, <\/i>due in part to the difficult nature of the text. Specifically, I shared a reading strategy called Phony Document and demonstrated how I use it<\/a> along with excerpts from Plutarch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s biography of Julius Caesar before we begin the play.<\/p>\n

Another pre-reading strategy I use with Julius Caesar<\/i> and other texts is called Story Impressions<\/a>, developed by William J. McGinley and Peter R. Denner. In this strategy, teachers list a series of words and\/or phrases that will appear in a text students are about to read. After giving students this list, students are asked to write a short story about what they predict will happen in the text based on the list of words provided.<\/p>\n

Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I personally like about Story Impressions.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. They can serve more than one purpose. Sometimes, I push students to think carefully about the words and to make predictions that are as accurate as possible. Other times, I encourage students to be more creative with their interpretations of the words and with their stories, emphasizing more the creative writing aspect of the activity. Furthermore, depending on my objectives, I tailor mine to emphasize different things about the text, such as vocabulary, characters, setting, themes, or conflicts.<\/li>\n
  2. Story Impressions can be effectively used with virtually any size work, from a short poem to a long novel.<\/li>\n
  3. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re relatively easy to develop. When I teach literature circles, for instance, and I have six different groups of students, with each group reading a different book, sometimes I start off with Story Impressions I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve created for each book. Because they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re fairly easy to write, this is a much more manageable goal than, oh, say writing a phony document for six different books. (I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t recommend trying this unless you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve content with your I-Have-No-Life status.)<\/li>\n
  4. Story Impressions can be successfully used with individuals, pairs, or small groups.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    With Julius Caesar<\/i>, for example, I present the following directions and list of words:<\/p>\n

    Using the words below in the order in which they appear, write a story that is your guess as to what happens in the play Julius Caesar<\/i>. Your story must be written in complete sentences and all words must be used. Please underline each word as you use it in your story.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Battle<\/p>\n

    Caesar<\/p>\n

    Race<\/p>\n

    Calpurnia<\/p>\n

    Thin<\/p>\n

    No<\/p>\n

    Beware<\/p>\n

    Soothsayer<\/p>\n

    Laugh<\/p>\n

    Senate<\/p>\n

    Fall<\/p>\n

    Elbows<\/p>\n

    Revolt<\/p>\n

    Cassius<\/p>\n

    Brutus<\/p>\n

    Escape<\/p>\n

    Fire-eater<\/p>\n

    Portia<\/p>\n

    Antony<\/p>\n

    Strategy<\/p>\n

    Taper<\/p>\n

    Ghost<\/p>\n

    Philippi<\/p>\n

    Oops<\/p>\n

    Sword<\/p>\n

    Octavius<\/p>\n

    \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

    After they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve written their stories, I have students share them and we discuss possible meanings for certain words. For instance, many don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that a taper is essentially a candle, and instead guess that it is person\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name or a place. This is a nice segue into discussions about any number of things you wish to emphasis. With Julius Caesar<\/i>, I try to keep discussions relatively light, only emphasizing a few key points, since most of our discussions on the play are rather heavy.<\/p>\n

    Stay tuned: My next educational post will include a during-reading prediction activity on Julius Caesar<\/i>, and I have a great activity called Mystery that I recently used with Fahrenheit 451<\/i> (one that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easily adaptable to other texts) to share soon as well. Oh, and on the I Seriously Couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Make This Stuff Up If I Tried Front, I recently discovered I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been regularly doing something idiotic for approximately ten months now, so naturally that story\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s itching to be told.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Earlier this month, I mentioned that I begin my unit on Julius Caesar with several pre-reading activities, due in part to the difficult nature of the text. Specifically, I shared a reading strategy called Phony Document and demonstrated how I use it along with excerpts from Plutarch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s biography of Julius Caesar before we begin the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1023],"tags":[1379,1380,1376,1377,1378,1357],"class_list":["post-2246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","tag-julius-caesar-english-lessons","tag-julius-caesar-reading-lesson","tag-pre-reading-with-julius-caesar","tag-story-impressions","tag-story-impressions-with-shakespeare","tag-teaching-julius-caesar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}