Article published on HLT magazine Year 12; Issue 6; December 2010, ISSN 1755-9715
http://www.hltmag.co.uk/dec10/sart08.htm
Geometrical Literature
Esterina La Torre, Italy
Introduction
As
teachers, when teaching literature, we often complain about state standards
content that needs to be mastered. In Italian secondary state schools, for
example, students should know a certain amount of literary and historical
periods, a number of authors, certain critical concepts or texts, not
forgetting the skills to analyze a text and comment on it. Anyway, these
content-based standards give the teachers various troubles, first they limit
teachers’ autonomy and second they tend to standardize the
curriculum using an old transmission model of instruction in which
teachers explain and impart lessons and then test for content knowledge. What
can we change? So far we have tried to modify our approach in many ways, from
the old traditional literary-historical-social transmission of content we moved
to the textual approach, from literary units we shifted to modular themes
but, as teachers, we all know we need to do more and different things to attract
and interest students especially when we teach literature.
Background
Teaching
literature can be really challenging, through literature you can teach
everything: grammar, listening, comprehension, writing, figurative language,
literary theory but, in devising tasks, we need to recognize differences in the
kind of “intelligences” (Gardner, 1993- 2000) students bring to our
class. English lessons, especially those connected to literature
may focus primarily on linguistic intelligences and sometimes on logical
intelligence, how can we engage students who have different styles? If it is
important to consider more kinds of “intelligences”, in planning tasks we need
to organize activities involving all types of “intelligences.” An
intriguing teaching approach to a foreign language literature could be the one
that takes into consideration not only Linguistic Intelligence, or the
ability to manipulate language to express oneself and the ability to use
language as a mean to remember information, but also Visual/Spatial
Intelligence, that gives students the ability to create mental images and
Logical-Mathematical Intelligence, i.e. the ability to detect patterns, reason
deductively and think logically.
We
could try to use a new approach to literature that could be defined
“geometrical”. When we talk, we normally use shapes, with idioms or describing
things, places and also people, take for example faces or parts of the body. In
a simple activity, often unconscious, like doodling, we make use of shapes,
while waiting or listening, when our minds are not too concentrate we draw
small circles, triangles, squares and, if analyzed, all of them mean something,
the regular repetition of the same shape means an organized and efficient mind;
They
all have a specificity: a circle means infinite, the eternal whole, the sun, but
also connection, community, wholeness, endurance, movement, safety, perfection,
if referred to the feminine: warmth, comfort, sensuality, and love. A rectangle
or a square symbolize the earth or ground but also order, logic,
containment, security. A triangle means energy, power, balance, law, science,
religion, if referred to the masculine: strength, aggression, and dynamic
movement.
Authors
often use shapes: the triangle, the line, the angle, the circle, they can all
become metaphors to develop their descriptions of characters and events.
A straight line is usually the symbol of something positive, acceptable:
a right way, a right life or goodness and rectitude, while a crooked line
symbolizes a deviation or, anyway, something negative. A circle means the
perfection, the cycle, the passage of time, the voyage, the leaving and the
returning in a same place the repetition of actions. We all know they are
metaphors but we can recognize their value and interpret them quite
easily because they are universal metaphors, shapes can be interpreted by
readers from all cultures and times, and are not limited to specific peoples
and regions thanks to their universality.
Examples
When shapes and literature
meet, the result can be really interesting and motivating. Let's see some
examples in the use of circular metaphors: William Wordsworth used the circle
metaphor in his ode: “Intimations of Mortality.”
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting
The soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar”
According to Wordsworth, the human soul rises and sets like the sun: it comes
from God, and returns at the end of its earthly “life.” Then, it is born once
again, in a continuous circular cycle of rising and setting from life to death
to life again.
Coleridge
used the same circular metaphorical route for his ballad “The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner” where we find the leaving from a harbor, the voyage and the
return in a circular sense, as Michael Burke notes, the poem reveals "the
Romantic myth of circular transcending journey”.
It
is an interesting vision of this
wonderful ballad but how can we help our
students “to see” shapes in literature? The answer is simple, you need to use
shapes in your explanations and demonstrations, you can draw them on the board
you can give handouts, you can start with online activities such as a plot
diagram to be completed just to lead
students toward the idea and relation between a story and a geometric shape http://readwritethink.org/materials/circle-plot/
The
same thing can be obtained with a readymade
Graphic Organizer
But
apart from these concepts we can deduce from the study of texts and poems,
which ones are the activities we can use to develop a literary geometrical
curriculum?
We
can create poems such as Diamond poems, we present an example and after a first
reading we observe the title and the grammatical parts of the composition:
War
by Saud
War
Sad, destructive
Killing, injuring, destroying
A thing that kills life.
Terminator
Line 1: War = 1 NOUN-A
Line 2: Sad, destructive = 2 related ADJECTIVES
Line 3: Killing, injuring, destroying = 3 descriptive
GERUNDS (verb + -ing)
Line 4: A thing that kills life. = 1 complete,
related SENTENCE
Line 5: Terminator = 1 NOUN-B (a synonym of NOUN-A)
Then we give the task:
After the identification of the
structure and form of the poem, establish the relationship between the first
and last line then create a Diamond poem (some titles could be:
Love-Life-Youth-School-Friendship).
Title of Poem
Author's
Name
_________________
_____________, ___________
_______________, ______________, _______________
____________________________________________________.
__________________
Of course, lots of these activities can be made online, for the lucky
teachers who have an online access this is the site where to find the Diamond
poem:
Another
activity is “Dancing On A Pyramid” (The original title of this
activity was “ Story Pyramid“ created by Donna Calder, Bullhead City
Intermediate School, Bullhead City, AZ.)
I
adapted it for the study of Ballads in English literature; the pyramid
helps students to understand characters and situations by organizing the whole
story on different levels. Students will be able: to read and understand
a ballad and to state the story problem.
The main task for the students is to develop
these points:
1. Write the name of the main
character of the ballad
2. Two adjectives describing
the main character
3. Three words describing the
setting
4. Four words stating the
story problem
5. Five words describing the
development of the story
6. Six words describing other
characters (or) events
7. Seven words describing the
ending
1. ____
2. ____ ____
3. ___ ____ ____
4. ___ ___ ____ ____
5. ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
6. ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
7. ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
Using templates and G.O.
Templates and Graphic Organizers are
also great tools to help us to develop a “geometrical” approach; on the net you
find a great variety of them, they can be used when presenting a poem, a text,
an extract, when introducing a new author or a literary period. They
create a different atmosphere in class, first because students seem really keen
on using them, second the task appears lighter and third all types of
intelligences can be satisfied, moreover they help students to move towards a
certain verbal autonomy, I have always found negative the tendency my students
had to learn content by heart and the use of key-words in Graphic
Organizers, instead of old style summaries, has helped the students to
overcome this bad habit. But where can you find G.Os? Apart the amount of G.Os
you can find on internet, there is the possibility to create your own on line
or on your PC, I created very simple ones using Word to help students to study
using only key words and developing a spoken autonomy when they needed to be
orally tested or to revise topics for their exams. One of my first organizers
was prepared for the study of the essential elements in the life and works of
an author: http://wwwnew.splinder.com/mediablog/estest/media/21853281
When explaining a literary period we
often struggle to let students understand the interrelations among history,
society and literature, it can be helpful to use this G.O. divided in three
different parts (Historical- Social-Literary) so that students can have a clear
vision of the events and the features connected to the literary
production of the time.
For the analysis of stories/tales
there is a rich choice of G.O.s starting from very simple ones like the ones
with the 5 Wh questions, to organizers like this:
Anyway when you need a G.O. and you
don’t want to lose precious time, the best place to go and find a readymade
one, with a range to select, is:
Conclusions
Using geometry while teaching
literature is, perhaps, not a new concept, anyway shapes and G.O.s are always
useful when used as a review or follow up exercise. Geometry can help “to shape”
our teaching to meet the needs of students that thanks to a simple organizer
made up of squares, triangles, circles, learn how to identify important
elements of an idea, clarify their thoughts and identify the various parts of a
concept, moreover, they learn to know how to outline a sequence of events in
chronological order or succeed in the identification of the main elements of a
story. A dedicated teacher tries to find useful strategies based on students’
interests, by using shapes he/she makes literature new and challenging, a
boring task can be easily transformed in a sort of game; using shapes is also a
way to organize minds and work, very often they are so simple and linear one
can easily draw them on the board avoiding photocopies. In this way it is also
possible to adapt and personalize them. Every teacher can create his/her own
G.O. to enhance students’ interest and participation; very often students like
to work on their own G.O.s and by letting them doing it we are able to
discover they have got a creativity without limits.
References / Webliography
Gardner, Howard, 1983, Frames
of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York
Liungman, Carl G., 1991,
Dictionary of Symbols (New York:
W.W. Norton & Company,)
Paran, Amos, 2008. The role
of literature in instructed foreign language learning and teaching: An
evidence-based survey.
Paxton Hood, Edwin,1856, William Wordsworth a biography. Dublin, Hodges and Smith.
Coleridge, S.T., 1992 The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner and other poems. Dover Publications.
Basic Symbology: Geometric
Shapes http://www.suestudios.com/geometricshapes.htm
Georgia Department of Education: http://public.doe.k12.ga.us/sup.aspx
Diamante poem:
http://www.readwritethink.org/student_mat/student_material.asp?id=53
Story map: http://www.aisr.cistron.nl/online_curriculum/holland_online/resources/story_map.jpg
http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/graphic-organizers/story-harder.pdf
Online tools: http://classtools.net/
Esterina
La Torre is an EFL in a secondary school in Italy and member of the national
committee of TESOL Italy. Current interests are: NLP and teaching, learning
objects, online learning, and research, creation of online environments. She
has written some articles on Tesol Italy Newsletter and online magazines, enjoys
experimenting and working with new technologies and online tools for educators.
E-mail:
estest7@gmail.com
