START-UP ACTIVITIES
Some suggested start-up activities for:
Contemporary Realism: The Beckoners and Stitches
Use students’ own knowledge and experience of bullying, fear, safety, aggression
Suggested questions:
Journalling, free-writing, pair discussions allow students to first process the questions with some privacy and safety prior to class discussions.
Suggested Terms: empathy, social responsibility, moral action
Further discussion topics could include:
Drama improvisation: asking students to think of a time when they were mean to someone or wanted to hurt someone
Contemporary Realism: The Beckoners and Stitches
Use students’ own knowledge and experience of bullying, fear, safety, aggression
Suggested questions:
- Can you remember a time when you felt nervous and unsafe with someone?
- If you think back to that time, how would you handle it differently now?
- What do you think causes bullying or aggression?
- Why are secrets and lies about danger and violence harmful?
Journalling, free-writing, pair discussions allow students to first process the questions with some privacy and safety prior to class discussions.
- Explanations about bullying as externalization of fear
- How to deal with anxiety and fear
- How to confront issues of active and passive harm
Suggested Terms: empathy, social responsibility, moral action
Further discussion topics could include:
- how characters develop inner ethics?
- choosing good when no one is watching?
- literary catharsis blended with interpretive reading: constitutional rights, models of care, becoming wiser and kinder citizens?
Drama improvisation: asking students to think of a time when they were mean to someone or wanted to hurt someone
