At the lower secondary level in MGS, we approach Unseen Prose in a segmented manner to begin wih. We usually start off with the less complex aspects such as character, setting, narrative viewpoint first before moving on to other more challenging aspects such as mood and atmosphere which would involve examining the writer's craft. For each aspect we cover, generally short extracts with accompanying questions are given to explore that particular aspect in detail. Mining for Meaning is a resource that we find very useful. Short clips of movies are also sometimes used as students sometimes find it easier to explore a director's craft in a movie, for example in the creation of tension. It is a good stepping stone because many students are much clearer about what is expected for a "technique" kind of question. They go beyond re-telling the content of the story and instead realise that they need to identify the techniques that the author uses, just like they had previously done for the movie clip.
Marianne
I wonder if an alternative spin to the use of visuals in class would be to have our students story-board a poem or a prose extract. I think that might actually help them with visualizing and understanding perspective or narrative point of view. Comments?
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