Transcript

To introduce and investigate the idea of point of view in literacy and literature when you do a comparison of the story of "The Three Little Pigs" and "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs." We do an initial reading and viewing of the Disney version of "The Three Little Pigs." We get to know the characters, try to understand how they view each other, their points of view of what happened in the story and then we do a reading of the true story and we try to understand the wolf's point of view of the story. 

To help all learners in the classroom engage and understand what point of view is and experience what point of view is, we enact the trial of the wolf in the case of the three little pigs. And the first thing we do is we set criteria for how the trial is going to play out, what the expectations are for each learner and what our goals are. The second thing we do, is we start thinking about what character we want to be and I can't guarantee that every student will get the character of choice, so what I do is we ask each student to choose three different characters they would like to be and in doing this we hopefully can get them to be one of the characters of their choice. 

Once the character assignments are finished, then the characters get to know who they are and what their role is in the story. It's their responsibility to define who their character is and to understand what their point of view is or to create a point of view for the way story is played. So for example if they were assigned the role of the police detective, they need to decide what type of police detective they are. Are they choosing a side, are they impartial? If they are a lawyer and they are going to be at the defense of the wolf, are they going to be able to see the story from the wolf's point of view and construct a defense? And understand that, maybe, they might need to alter their point of view. 

Once everybody has done that, they've created a character profile, which has an illustration, a written portion. The drama portion comes in and my colleague works with the kids to develop their characters and prepare them for the actual trial. 

A lot of the drama curriculum can be cross-referenced with the language curriculum, particularly in the oral language strand. And so we begin by discussing a point of view and how we can demonstrate that point of view, not only with words and the language we use but also with our tone of voice. We talk about connotation and denotation and how the same word can be used to relay a different message depending not only on the word used, but the body language and the tone of voice. We talk about what makes an interesting character, how we can portray a certain point of view to the audience. If we want the wolf to sound guilty, what do we need to do with the language? With our faces? With our body? If we want the wolf to seem innocent what do we need to do with our language, our faces and our body? 

We also go through inferencing as well, what words can we make to help the audience make the connections that we want them to make? And the students really enjoy thinking about their characters and making these connections because it becomes something that is highly motivating to them. They're motivated to participate in this activity to perform and helps to further engage them in the book, in the literacy and in building these skills. 

The preparation takes about three days. We don't write a formal script, we get together and talk about ideas and that way without a formal script, it becomes more natural. It seems like a real trial and that also energizes the students cause it's part of improvisation which is also part of the drama curriculum. 

When we finally reach the performance, there is a lot of energy, it is a high excitement activity. They're very excited to perform and because it's so spontaneous and because they have done all this preparation on point of view and how to create these characters with their personality, they come alive. I've seen children who are shy, find their voice. I've seen children who would think, oh the three little pigs is just a fairy tale for kindergarteners, really take to the story and really become immersed in it and it just becomes such a great activity, and it helps build commodity among students. They're so supportive of each other because they're all improvising together. And they become part of the story, part of the character. It's just really wonderful to see children become so excited about something that many of them think is not age appropriate for them. 

Before the jury announces their decision, each student has the opportunity to state their point of view on the outcome of the trial, whether they feel the wolf is guilty or not. Some students will write down their point of view, others will present it orally. And in this way each student has a chance to express themselves fully, regardless of whether they are skilled at writing or not. So once everyone has presented their point of view, we have the jury announce the verdict of the trial, and then we compare all the points of view and discuss the reasons for the different point of view as well.

Related References