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Fantastic
Stories of the Environment
Program
Area
This activity
can be used as a mini short story unit in the Grade 9 Language
class and the grade 10 English class. It is well suited to the
senior curriculum, especially in the E.S.L. curriculum. It can
also be used in part as independent activities to complement specific
themes or cross-curricular activities with other Program Areas
or Subjects.
Learning
Outcomes
Teaching,
learning and evaluation will focus on the students ability
to:
- Decode
themes which have an impact on the environment in short works
of fiction.
Classroom Development
- Give
students a chance to learn that short stories offer opportunities
for the exploration of environmentally relevant themes. Elicit
responses from students, in the manner of a brain-storming
session, examples of environmental ideas or situations that
they have found in short stories that they have read previously.
Compile a list of student responses on the board. They may suggest
aspects of movies (The Toxic Avenger), comic books (Swamp Thing),
cartoons (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).
- Explain
to the students how the short story is a medium which allows
a reader to explore specific ideas, themes, situations, relationships
in a fictional manner, where it can be safely viewed apart from
reality. Short stories tend to focus on a particular
conflict or experience and, as such, they sometimes ignore the
requirements of a novel to explore character development, setting,
and complex plots.
- Assign
students to specific groups which are intended to focus on,
discuss, précis, and present a particular text. There
are eight texts included here of widely differing levels of
difficulty, so that the destreamed class can be organized according
to reading levels or in a homogeneous manner.
- Students
are directed to read all texts, discuss their texts with the
group to develop a list of the environmentally relevant aspects,
and write an individual environmental précis. This précis
should take the form of a description of the environmentally
relevant aspects or attitudes found in these texts. Students
should then meet to discuss and compile their work into one
group précis. This product will be presented to the class
and included in an annotated bibliography described
below. Useful extensions of this activity includes independent
reading and book reports intended to supplement the annotated
bibliography. Students should be directed to search out short
stories, and possibly works in various fictional media, read
them, and describe in a paragraph or two the suitability of
the texts for study in this unit. This material would supplement
the class produced annotations of the texts studied in class.
- Have
students choose another text out of the list. In their writing
folders students should describe their personal response at
being placed in the shoes of the protagonist. Place
the following questions on the board to aid in the personal
response: How would they feel or act in this situation? What
solutions would they choose? Why would they choose them?
- First,
draw upon the wealth of student knowledge that students have
unconsciously picked up from exposure to popular media. Let
them know that you feel that what they bring to the class is
as valid as what they learn in class.
Quiz
Questions
On separate
occasions students can be given the opportunity to respond in
class to the following quiz questions. Students should be given
the questions in advance and even be allowed to discuss the questions
in advance with peers. These questions are difficult, and perhaps
beyond the level of difficulty usually encountered by students
at this stage. Therefore they should develop answers in groups
but present them individually.
- In the
Word of Unbinding, Festin can be seen as a steward
of the environment. What about Volls role? Describe Festins
role and contrast it with Volls role in the story.
- In Dragon
Magic & Rule of Names, how the humans interact
with Dragons depend on their cultural background. Choose one
interaction on which to focus and analyze why the human acts
they way he or she does.
- In The
Garbage Collector, the protagonist is a man faced with
a fundamental change in his attitude to life, society and his
profession. Describe, in the form of a personal journal entry,
how you would react if you were either the husband or the wife.
- The
Summer Witch and The Word of Unbinding present
protagonists who experience nature in a way in which we never
can. Choose one part of natureelement, plant or animaland
describe how you would see our society from this new perspective.
Evaluation
Evaluation
for class work should be based on task dedication, contribution
to the group and the learning of others, and the groups
willingness to compromise, as well as a formal evaluation of the
final product. The quizzes can be evaluated as the teacher sees
fit, depending on the students writing skills and knowledge
base. Independent work and creative response should be graded
on a pass/fail basis to encourage students to take risks and experiment.
Failure would be dependent on the students unwillingness
to extend personal horizons. Make success dependent on creative
thinking skills, where possible.
Background
Information
A short
annotated bibliography of selected short stories is included here
both as material for the activity and as an example of how the
students Annotated Bibliography project might
be presented. The following texts are representative and widely
available. The teacher is encouraged to both modify this list
and elicit student addition of texts.
Bradbury, Ray. The April Witch. In The Golden Apples
of the Sun. New York: Bantam Books, 1961.
This story, like The Word of Unbinding below, describes
an intimate contact with the sights and smells of nature and the
beings found therein. Both texts provide excellent contrasts of
experiences, especially as the protagonists are respectively female
and male. Be sure to highlight, for discussion, the gender stereotyping
whereby both characters act out of love; the female strives for
the love of a person while the male strives to protect
the land that he loves.
Bradbury, Ray. The Garbage Collector. In The Golden
Apples of the Sun. New York: Bantam Books, 1961.
This very short story lends itself to discussions of trash and
environmentally catastrophic events. The Garbage Collector
is a powerful story describing how the trash collector might have
to deal with the fallout of an atomic explosion. It provides a
meaningful contrast between the traditional trash man
and the modern waste disposal technician.
Le Guin, Ursula K. The Rule of Names. In The Winds
Twelve Quarters. New York: Bantam Books, 1975.
This is another dragon fantasy, though in a non-specified cultural
context which is a suitable companion for Dragon Magic. This text
also deals with the power that comes with the knowledge of names.
Le Guin, Ursula K. The Word of Unbinding. In The Winds
Twelve Quarters. New York: Bantam Books, 1975.
This is an overtly environmental tale which places the wizard
Festin, a steward of the land, against Voll the Fell, an inhuman
force which ravages the land and its inhabitants. This text is
worth being dealt with in depth to illustrate how the physical
setting of a story becomes both an environmental battleground
and the prize for which Festin is willing to give all.
Norton, Andre. Dragon Magic. New York: Ace Books, 1980.
This text focuses on the richness that comes with the sharing
of multicultural experiences. Dragon Magic is actually a novel
in four parts in which four youths independently encounter mythical
figures from their own cultural past through the completion of
four dragon puzzles found in an abandoned house. They become friends
through the sharing of these personal experiences. Germanic, African,
Celtic and Chinese historical episodes contract differing views
towards this common mythical creature. This text can be assigned
to four students/groups for study and presentation.
Timing
Independent
bibliography assignment. One period, broken down into 20 min to
explain the activity, and 40 min of class time in a later period
to work on the paragraph(s). Time provided for the compilation
of the annotations should also include time for text entry and
DTP activity, whether it is a cross-curricular activity in a keyboarding
class, or done in the language/English/ESL class. Ensure that
this activity includes a quick lesson on the proper form for documenting
sources that is advocated by your school/board.
Cross-disciplinary
Links
Keyboarding
classes are encouraged to participate in the Annotated Bibliography
project by compiling the précis, and perhaps also performing
the Desk Top Publishing duties. Art classes can provide illustrations
suitable for the Annotated Bibliography project and
advanced art classes may be able to bind the text as a book. Senior
level English classes should be enlisted to assist with the editing
and proofreading of the text.
Student
Instruction Guide
Introduction
This activity
will require you to keep an open mind, especially if you are a
good English student. Youll be looking at literature
from a new perspective; an environmental perspective. Instead
of describing the plot, characters, crisis, and falling action,
youll have the opportunity to explore environmental themes
and attitudes. You will be expected to read a variety of texts
and compile an annotated bibliography of the texts.
Process
- In groups,
read the assigned text and précis the aspects of the
text which appear to be environmentally focused. Your group
should agree on the wording of one description and make sure
that each of you has a copy of the précis in your notebook
or writing folder.
- Jigsaw
into a new group and share what your original group discovered
with the new group. Ask questions to clarify the others
précis if it is not clear.
- Using
either the resource centre in your school or a list provided
by your teacher, choose another short story on which to repeat
the first two steps.
- In your
writing folder or response journal describe how you would feel
if placed in the shoes of a protagonist in one of
the stories that you have précised.
Follow-up
- As the
final step in this activity, all of your précis can be
compiled into a single annotated bibliography. You
and your classmates can choose the format. Check existing annotated
bibliographies in your school library for examples of
proper format.
- Your
completed work should be presented to the library for inclusion
in your schools reference collection of environmental
materials. In the future, other classes will be able to build
on your work or use it as reference material for other projects.
You may wish to offer your annotated bibliography to your local
public library to supplement its reference materials, or even
forward a copy to the Merril Collection of Science Fiction
and Fantasy run by the Toronto Public Library. The Merril
Collection is Canadas top reference collection of speculative
fiction and it may be able to use your work.
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