Week 9

Day 1

Aim: What 's the setting of Fences? What's the significance of such a setting?

Activities:

Setting includes :

• place
• time
• mood
• conflicts
• foreshadowing
• historical background

Read the setting (page 1) and the historical background information about the play. Do the following:

• Why is the background info important for reading the play?
• Do research online and find out what was happening in the US in 1957.

Day 2

Aim: What is included in the Fences project(  Three  pieces of writing and One Collage)?

1. Read the entire play and pick any of the three scenes to write a summary, create a glossary and find 3 quotes & explain why they are important to you.
2. Pick one topic from the list below and write an analysis essay on Fences
   • Character analysis
     • Write a separate paragraph for a major character in the work. Develop each point into a paragraph :
       
       1. Introduce the character by name and tell what role they play in the story.
       2. Describe the character.
       3. What important interactions take place between this character and others in the story?
       4. What words spoken in the story help us to understand this character? Explain
       5. What is each character's underlying motivations (the basic reason that he or she acts in a certain way) or goal?.
       6. In what way, if any, does the character change by the end of the story?
       7. How do you feel about this character, and why?
       
   • Theme Analysis-Pick one theme to write your analysis. Provide three examples from the book to illustrate the theme.
     • To describe each example, you need to include the following information:
     • What happened? What did the character do to show the theme?
     • What did the character say or think ?
     • What is the consequence of his/ her action?
   • Title analysis
   • Symbolism in Fences-Such as Fences, Three Strikes You are Out, Nine Innings, Setting
   • The Analysis of the setting
3. Pick one of the ideas to do a creative writing:
   • Choose a character and pretend to be him/her and follow her through the whole book. Write diaries from his/her point of view retelling or responding to the events happened in the book.
   • Be a news reporter and turn certain events into news articles.
   • Collage/text rendering (freewrite in response to a portion of the text and then create a collage, inserting portions of freewrite into the original text)
   • Rewrite a scene using a different genre, for example, you can turn a very interesting chapter of a novel into a dramatic scene, or a narrative poem; or you can choose a different point of view to retell the story (see lessons on Point of View Writing)
   • Critical essays on a certain issue in the novel
    
   • Research McBride the musician & look for parallels with McBride the writer
   • Use different literary response approaches, such as psychological, historical and political perspectives, to prove the significance of the work( Read an example)
   • You can also write about the connections between an art work and the story (read an example: art's unfighting feelings)
   • Position paper on an issue in the text
   • Write your own story that's related to the theme or subject in the book, for example, your similar childhood story, etc.
4. Create an illustrations of an important scene ( climax, turning point, ending, etc) or any other art related to the story Or make a collage based on the themes of the play. of

   Bring in the Complete the project when coming back from the Spring Break (April 28th,2003).

Or You can do  a Resource Bank project on Fences