18/19 May 2017

Today our class was lucky to spend time with writer and educator Mary Rechner, who engaged students with a poetry lesson to extend our consideration of key themes in Station Eleven. The lesson focuses on the concept of erasure. Students began by writing from the perspective of a character from the novel, considering what that character might miss from "before" the epidemic.

Next, students worked in groups as members of a kind of Travelling Symphony. Groups were assigned a poem to rehearse and perform, giving a reading of the piece that conveys the poem's meaning. Poems include the following:

"Life on Mars," David Bowie
"The Museum of Obsolescence," Tracy K. Smith
"City That Does Not Sleep," Federico Garcia Lorca
"Poetry of Departures," Phillip Larkin
"The Summer Day," Mary Oliver
"Campo dei Fiori," Czeslaw Miloz

After performances, Mary Rechner introduced students to the concept of erasure as a poetic technique, reading selections from the work poet Robin Coste Lewis (author of Voyage of the Sable Venus). (https://literary-arts.org/archive/robin-coste-lewis/)

As a class, we examined a range of examples of erasure poems (Coste Lewis’s slide show of examples of erasure in poetry can be viewed at http://literary-arts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Lewis-Final-Race-Within-Erasure_low-res.pdf).

Students then used their freewrites and the poems they worked with to create erasure poems of their own. At the end of class, students shared their work with their peers.

To take it further, listen to Coste’s Portland Arts & Lectures lecture about erasure and poetry on the Archive Project https://literary-arts.org/archive/robin-coste-lewis/

"Station Eleven" In-Class Essay Make-Up Session

For students who intend to miss the Station Eleven in-class essay scheduled for Thursday, 25 May and Friday, 26 May, there will be a make-up session on Tuesday, 23 May from 3:30-5 p.m. in Room 219.

17/22 May 2017

Today after SSR, students learned about oral storytelling strategies from This American Life producer Ira Glass, then viewed Michael Massomino's "Making Waves" performance  from The Moth. After discussing the strengths of the performance, students had time to work on developing their own oral narratives, which will be performed in class on 30/31 May 2017.

15/16 May 2017

After the reading test, students engaged in SSR, then spent time discussing the motif of science and science fiction as it is developed in the novel.

11/12 May 2017

Today during SSR students focused on collecting examples of different types of storytelling in the novel. We discussed the purpose of each type of storytelling, and the significance of the motif in the novel.

Discussion turned toward the role of storytelling in our own lives and the attributes of a great oral story.

The Museum of Memories assignment was distributed, and students got underway listing possible stories to use as the base for that project.

Museum of Memories Project

The culminating activity for this unit involves creating a Museum of Stories that focus on your experiences at Grant. We will spend time brainstorming story ideas in class, then begin crafting stories to represent your experience as a student here. The assignment guidelines can be found here.

9/10 May 2017

Today students took a reading test over chapters 1-26 of the novel, then worked on the literary postcards that were assigned during our last session. At the end of class, students shared their postcards, then discussed some of the realizations those pieces led them to in relation to the novel and its themes.