creative process model notes for Things Fall Apart

1. Bridge to prior experience: (cultural frontloading)

• Questions/discussion about Punishment
• w/community
• connect to Kohlberg’s moral dvpt model
• let the punishment fit the crime—how is punishment decided on as society, as well as smaller units within community
• create microcosm within classroom based on conflicts in novel to simulate situation and stimulate discussion

2. Prediction: Title –predict meaning/significance (perhaps after historical frontloading)
   


3. storytelling
• orally; discussion traditions/significance/reason for storytelling; also discuss stories used to explain behavior, stories used as rules of behavior, stories used to explain natural occurrences (creation myths, ancient myths, folklore, legends, tall tales?)
• cultural connection: explore native am. stories/culture as comparison and primary source available in community (text-text, text-world)


4. story writing-class unit-long project anchored to reading of novel: what's newsworthy? (explore differences in potential/limitations between var. media types/outlets)
• newspaper
• town crier
• newsletter
• "tv news?"


5. textual explorations (close reading)
   
• motifs - silence, darkness, fire
• symbolism - fire, gender
  
• language - e.g. power of names and language (why the word "snake" must never be uttered in the dark of the night); language as empowering v. stripping away power (colonialism--imposing new language, culture on existing one)
  


6. focus on themes
• father/son relationship
• husband/wife relationship
• mother/daughter relationship
• spiritual leaders (roles, significance, reflection on culture)
  


7. extension activities (based on close reading)
   
• proverbs-take adages/proverbs and create stories explaining the origin of proverbs (e.g. tortoise story in text)--creative/diff. ways of looking at common things
  
• signal phrases as storytelling element/technique
  


8. redressing of title (respond to initial prediction of title significance/meaning)