Friday, September 22^nd

  
   We worked on characters this week in class, which was an interesting experiment.  The first day, they worked on individual characters & then presented them in a talk show format.  This actually took up two classes to completely make it through—because almost everyone wanted to present their character.  I had them draw it individually, so they could have a visual representation of what they were creating.  I’m not sure if this accomplished much of anything.  I thought it would be a look into their imaginations, and it sort of was—but there wasn’t much out of the ordinary stuff.  I got into the talk show thing—because of the audience questions.  They would really try to come up with unique questions about the characters that we hadn’t heard before, and I found myself really encouraging new kinds of questions.  The characters themselves weren’t really “acted out.”  No one used a different voice to “play” the character—they just answered the questions in their own voice.  I assume that some of them were probably answering them from their own point of view as well, but I think this is something writers do as well—use themselves and people around them as inspirations.  It took SO long to do each talk show guest, and students were getting visibly agitated towards the end, but by that point I couldn’t NOT show each person’s. 

  The next class, we began with the idea of creating characters in groups that would be part of our novella.  I told them we would start with the novella show and then focus on our soccer show.  I handed each group a body form that I messily drew before class & told them to work together to make one character (girl or boy—or to disregard the body form and create whatever animal or creature they wanted).  They all began using the body form right away—which was drawn with pants.  I think this led them to believe that the characters should be boys—because all of them were, with the exception of “Lupita” who was a “tom boy.” 

  
   At first, this activity was a disaster.  Few of the groups were understanding the idea of making one character together—and I thought for a moment about changing it to a whole group activity.  Instead, I went table to table to figure out how this teamwork could happen.  I knew there was chaos going on in parts of the room, but I really took my time with each group & heavily praised them when they found ways of working together—and after about five minutes, each group seemed to find ways of working that were satisfactory to them.   At the end of class, we did a shortened “presentation” news show, where the students “artists” I called them, showcased their character.  This was a way for them all to become familiar with each character.  I went home thinking that we might need more characters—and especially some girls in the story.  So, the next class, I did the same activity—still really enjoying building those small group dynamics—and told them this character needed to be different than their previous—if it was a boy, it should be a girl or another creature.  I decided to break a couple of groups up that were having trouble, and give out more human forms.  This resulted in six (instead of four) characters—two aliens, one skeleton, two women, and one male character.  The enjoyment was still there—for me and for the students as we presented these characters. 

 
Doing this activity I think is really central to the ideas of the curriculum—and should be taught before the idea of story (and maybe even setting) come into it.  Because right away, there is a way where EVERYONE’s input into the process is literally seen—in the forms of the characters.  And, there is also the group work to make it happen.