It's Story Time!

Week 4, Day 1

Class started off with Professor Moss asking us to seat ourselves in chronological birthday order, with the Januarys sitting in the front of the class and the Decembers sitting in the back.  This time, we were supposed to sit in a serpertine-like order.  My classmates and I were able to do this very quickly and successfully; we definitely seated ourselves much faster than when we were asked to sit in first name alphabetical order a few weeks ago.

After the rearranging activity, Professor Moss placed everyone into groups of four.  We were asked to each take out two items to use for storytelling.  I took out a flashlight and a box of peach-flavored Tic Tacs.  My group members took out a lip balm, a wallet, a sketchbook, a ruler, a comb, and pretzel sticks.  We were given about 10-15 minutes to come up with a story that involved all of these items.  My group members and I came up with a story about a girl named Samantha and her archnemesis Abigail.  After time was up, Professor Moss asked each group to share their story to the class.  Each group had a distinctly different style that stood out from the others.  The first group came up with a murder story (which sounded like it could actually happen in real life), the second group had all four members taking turns telling the story, the third group (my group) came up with names for the characters, the fourth group moved each item around as the storyteller told the story, and the last group incorporated incredible science fiction terms into their story.  I think the storyteller in the last group did an awesome job of telling the story, incorporating fancy sci fi words here and there.  The whole class was amazed.  All in all, I really enjoyed doing this storytelling activity.  It was fun working with the people in my group and seeing what we could come up with using the required resources in a limited amount of time.

Our homework over the weekend was to come up with a short phrase and find 10 images that would change the meaning of that phrase.  As everyone walked around the room looking at the pictures on each posterboard, we realized that no one actually did the assignment "correctly."  Most of us just found 10 different examples for each phrase, rather than 10 different meanings.  Professor Moss said that we were supposed to find 10 pictures that would change the meaning of the phrase each time.  Because none of us did the assignment correctly, we all have to redo it again for next week.