CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

Section One & Two: Author whakapapa & story context

Understanding who your author is, where they come from and why they write is crucial to understanding the text that you choose to read. Additionally, understanding when they are writing their stories is important as the values of the time in which they are writing helps to define what and how they write. Complete these tasks to help you understand your author's whakapapa and your story's context:

1. Google Search your author and pick at LEAST THREE sources. This can be as simple as their Wikipedia page.

2. Read these sources and answer these questions:

   1. Who is your author?

   2. Where and when did they live?

   3. What were the important values of their time? eg was it ok to own slaves? Were women allowed to marry whomever they wanted? Did mental health patients get locked up in insane asylums?

   4. What motivates your author to write? What message do they want to get out to the world?

Section Three: Close reading your text

Read your book for the first time. As you do, complete this task:

1. Character map - on a piece A3, write down each of the characters as you come across them. Draw arrows between the characters to denote their relationships and add in adjectives that describe each character and at least one quote for each characters.

After completing your first reading of your story, complete these tasks to set you up for a close analysis.

1. Audience positioning. Write down five words that describe how you feel after reading this book. For example, sad, happy. These adjectives will become your tools for discussing the impact on the audience. So always keep them in front of you.

2. Figure out of the theme. What's this story about? To do this, work through these questions:

   1. Who's the main protagonist?

   2. What challenges do they face?

   3. How do they face these challenges?

   4. How do they change over the course of the narrative?

   5. What main ideas are thrown up by the adventures of the protagonist and what do you learn about these ideas?

3. Think about which chapter / section you remember best. It is now time to reread this chapter, thinking about these things as you go:

• 1. What is the title of the chapter / section?

  2. Who is the main protagonist of this chapter? What are they doing, thinking about, reacting to?

  3. Identify TEN main quotes from this chapter - note these and justify why you have chosen each one.

  4. Identify language features that the author employs in this chapter and explain why you think she used it.

Section Four: Some other takes on your text - stretching your thinking

Now is the time to start to stretch your thinking about your text and you do this by reading book reviews. So google search your text's title and complete these questions:

1. What do your reviews say about your text?

2. What do the reviews say about the theme and characters?

3. What do the reviews say about why the book was written?

4. What questions do you start to think about as you read these reviews?

Section Five: Research

Below are the Level Two and Three research options. Work with your teacher to ensure that you are on the right pathway.

Level Two Research

Level Two research asks you to pull an issue out of your text and learn more about it so that it increases your understanding of your text. Click this link to find out what you need to do.

Level Three Unit Standard Written Texts Research

Level Three Unit Standard research asks you to use articles and book reviews to learn more about the author and what they are writing about so that it increases your understanding of your text. Click this link to find out what you need to do.

Level Three Achievement Standard Critical Texts Research

We are now going to stretch our thinking of the text by engaging in critical text research. What this means is that we read how experts have interpreted, understood and thought about the text so that we can understand better ourselves. Below are some critical texts that relate to this text and to understand what the research project is asking you to do (as well as how to do it), click here.

The following are critical texts that relate to Tu. Some will have a direct link, naming the novel directly, and others will be linked by the insight they provide about the background or motivation of the author to write her story.

In no way should you read all of these, cover to cover. You need to be more strategic; look at the titles, read the contents page to pick which sections of the book are best to read, skim and scan to identify sections of chapters that you need to read closely and take notes from - look for keywords from your questions, use subheadings to identify relevant sections.

Not all of these critical texts will answer your questions; so look for the ones that do. Pick three to four to read and take notes from.

Also, if you find that you aren't answering one of your questions, and/or your reading is taking you in a new and unexpected direction, simply change your questions and hypothesis in line with what you are reading - this is what research is; learning and changing what you think as you learn more.