As an introduction to the book White Bird, we want students to use their imagination and create their own ideas of what the book may be about. Students will be invited into a safe, friendly, and carefree environment for learning.
Our goal for this multimodal response lesson is to create a space where students can engage in more dialogue with peers, using a minimal amount of written text.
We believe that the inclusion of the literary tea party prior to reading the text will allow students an opportunity to form their own understanding of what the text may be about. It will generate student interest, curiousity, and motivation to read more.
This lesson connects to our comprehension goal about character development because almost all of the quotes provided are spoken by the characters in the book. Students will get an insight on who the characters in this story are, their personalities, and struggles they are going through based on the list of quotes pulled throughout the book.
This will deepen students' comprehension because they are being provided with background information from the text before they even begin reading or know what the book is truely about.
Finally, this activity will give all students some background knowledge that will aid them in furthering their thinking as they begin reading.
This is a list of the quotes we picked from the book that we feel accurately reflect the story. These quotes will be used in the introduction lesson so students can start to develop an idea of possible themes and topics in White Bird.
A tableau is an acting method that consists of a group of students choosing an important scene in a story, and acting it out by freezing in various poses.
Here is the break down of White Bird by parts and sections for groups to be split into:
The use of a tableau is to help students understand and visualize important parts of the text, using non-traditional forms. Students who are watching the tableau are still participating by providing insight into their group discussions about the scene performed.
Furthermore, the use of the guided thinking chart will allow students track their thinking throughout the book. In the end, this chart will be a wonderful resource with all of the big, important events in each section of the book.
Not only does this chart track thinking, but it is useful for tracking theme as well.
With a source that compiles all of the key moments, students can start to make connections and think more deeply about the plot, storyline, overall themes and lessons in the story.
By requiring students to combine kinesthetic movement and drawing/writing, this will allow for a multimedial representation of theme. Theme is such an important concept to understand in a book because it help students connect to the larger comprehension goal of character development.
Finally, through a tableau, students will use inferencing to think about characters' feelings beyond just surface level pictures.
Guided Thinking Chart printable
Transmediation is the process of translating a work into a different medium. Students will create their own transmediation response for White Bird, acting as an invitation into their perspective of the book as a whole.
An important thing to note is that this does not require recreating a specific event that took place in the book, but rather, it is an expression of each students’ individual response to the book.
Students will complete this activity after the whole book has been read by the class.
After students individually create a transmediation piece to bring to class, students will walk around and explore each others representations, like a gallery walk.
This will most likely take an hour for students to thoroughly explore their peers' transmediations.
This activity is included as a part of our comprehension lesson plan because it requires students to have a deep understanding of the book and develop a creative response.
Instead of writing a formal paper about the book, allowing students to bring in something to share that they are proud of and reflects an artistic ability important to them, gives students an opportunity to get excited about what they are learning.
This activity connects to our comprehension goals and strategies:
These comprehension goals relate to the transmediation process because by giving students a unique opportunity to show that they have reached these goals in a more creative and alternative way, than answering high level questions or writing a paper for instance. Not to say that strategies like answering questions or writing a paper should be avoided, however, it is important to give students voice and a choice in their learning when possible!
The materials and resources that the teacher would need to prepare for students to complete this activity would depend on what form or representation students wanted to create!
The neat thing about transmediation responses is that they are so varied, being anything from food, artwork, music, playlists, poetry or even drama.
As the teacher, if you wanted/needed to provide students with materials, they would need to bring their idea(s) to you beforehand so you can prepare, and even connect with other staff (art, music, pe, tech), to get students set up with everything they need.
The goal of doing a transmediation response is to not go out and buy things. The cost of materials should not pose an issue and using materials from home should be emphasized.
One way to encourage and promote a reusable mindset is to have students look at "Trash to Treasure" examples online.
Lastly, it would be beneficial to provide students with an example of a transmediation response created by you.
Before sending students off to create their own, brainstorming aloud as a class is a very useful strategy to get students started!
***Here*** is an example of a transmediation response we created for the novel, White Bird.