Grade: Senior

#2326. Great Expectations Activity

Reading/Writing, level: Senior
Posted Mon Jul 30 09:23:59 PDT 2001 by Robert Trowbridge (trowb@home.com).
Michigan City High School, Michigan City, IN
Materials Required: Posterboard, construction paper, glue, scissors
Activity Time: three weeks
Concepts Taught: recognizing relationships/ cause and effect

this is a somewhat difficult activity that worked well for me. I've noticed that students often have a dificult time keeping the relationships between all of the characters of Great Expectations straight. This activity not only helps students understand the story better, but it helps them with spatial problem solving as well.

What the students are to do is to make a visual representation between the various characters in the story. they will have to cut shapes from the Construction paper to represent each character (you can start with a list of characters that you feel are important enough to the story to represent). Next, they will paste all of the characters onto a poster board. As the story unfolds, the students must make lines between the characters with a brief explanation of what impact each has on the other. This is not as easy as it sounds!! Students will find as they go along that it becomes increasingly harder to fit everything in. They may even have to go back and rearrange their characters so the lines will be more evenly spaced. When I finished mine, it looked like a subway map! Adjust for difficulty using the following criteria:

1. Obviously, you can assign them to do this with as many characters as you want. I had between eighteen and twenty, but you can assign fewer.

2. Students can be required to use several different colors to represent the characters. To show cause and effect relationships, they have to use the color of the character causing an action as the line connecting the the two.

3. Students can be given more leeway on he type of presentation they turn in. they could make a mobile or use little plastic people within a setting to accomplish the same assignment. Credit can be given on originality, as well.