Day: September 1, 2022

This activity was about gathering our first impressions and comparing them to create an informed opinion. First impressions on texts are important as they are what you think or understand of the story. We chose two texts from different perspectives. I chose The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing by Aesop and Little Red Riding Hood Not Quite by Yvonne Morrison. The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing is portraying the wolf in a bad light, whereas Little Red Riding Hood Not Quite gives multiple opinions about why the wolf wouldn’t be at fault all while reading the original story. We wrote a short summary about each text along with what we noticed about the texts and the use of vocabulary or language features. After writing each summary, we compared the two texts and stated our opinion about what we currently think. Each text has made me come to realize that the ‘norm’ often paints the wolf in a bad light and authors emphasise physical features of wolves in order to accomplish this. I understand that although people could look at both perspectives, they would still naturally think that the wolf is the antagonist. These books that make the wolves as a villian create a mindset that all wolves are bad. This makes it that people would be unable to differentiate the realistic characteristics of a wolf and the made up attributes of a wolf.

I enjoyed this activity because I got to look at two perspectives and share my opinion about this. I also think that this task has made it easier for me to compare two texts or two characters in depth and form an educated opinion using learning conversations.

LI: to notice how authors use vocabulary to develop characters in a text.

Describing a character can give you the ability to realize and notice unique traits an author gives the character. Our focus for this task was to describe characters, using our knowledge from the texts. Our reading group read through many children’s literature. Some of these texts were painting the wolf in a bad light, and some of these texts were paitning the wolf in a good light. After reading these texts, we completed follow up tasks to build our understanding on characterisation and how authors can use vocabulary to make the readers look at a character how the author wants them to look like.

This task was about describing a character using adjectives. We described the wolf character and then used an example from the text, giving evidence on why we would think that. For example; The wolf character from Wolves by Emily Gravett is deceiving because he used a planned out and inhumane technique to kill the sheep by luring it using a sheep carcass. In this statement, I stated my thoughts on how I think the sheep is deceiving and then backed that up with evidence from the text.

I enjoyed this activity because it got me to look into the text and notice what the character does in order to think of the personality or traits of the character.

 

Using your sensory imagery helps to describe a scene with greater detail. Our reading group read texts from two different perspectives that focused on wolves.

This task was about describing a scene in the text using our sensory imagery (olfactory, gustatory, tactile, auditory, visual and kinesthetic). This task allowed us to point out the vocabulary author’s use to impact the way the reader would think of the scene. To describe a scene, you can use hooks to give the reader interest in the book and ask themselves what happens next. For example: “My screams could be heard from a mile away”. This gives information but also makes people think about what could have happened that made the character scream. To write a scene description, people use; the time of day, verbs, adverbs, the setting, the weather, a colour, a touch, a smell and a sound. Using all of these, you would be able to write a scene with extreme detail and also hook in the audience to want to read more.

I enjoyed this activity because I find it interesting that when writing a scene, you can notice things that doesn’t immediately come to mind.