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Module: Goosebumps and Spine Chills
Focus: Suspense narratives
Sequence:
- Students write a suspense story, cold, in 30 minutes, on paper.
This provides the "pre-test" to see what their prior knowledge is and
whether what we teach has any effect.
- They copy this directly onto a wiki, each having a separate page.
This provides an electronic copy of their first attempt, both as
material for future use and for their reflection.
- Students examine the structure of a narrative by reading several
model narratives. They are asked to identify when the story moves from
introduction to complication to suspense building to climax to
resolution.
- They examine one of the stories on the wiki and identify the same.
- They return to their story and create version 2, trying to
incorporate the structural elements. Each version is recorded
automatically in the wiki.
- The repeat this process, this time looking specifically at
suspense devices (light to dark, familiar to unfamiliar, etc).
- Once again, they are able to readily review and evaluate a large
body of writing in the wiki.
- Students may invite others to edit their work. All edits are
traceable in a wiki.
- They repeat it once again with a close examination of the variety
of processes (verbs and verb phrases) used throughout their story, the
balance and reason for using a particular kind of process (eg. mental
processes help us get inside a characters head - critical to narratives)
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