Supplies: White paper; crayons, colored pencils, or markers
Time Allotment: 90-100 minutes if you want the students to complete in class, half that if you want them to finish as homework.
Procedures:
- Write the following quotation on the board: “Telling a story…is like seeing a great uprooted tree: the nobility of its trunk, the grandeur of its branches, the strength of its naked roots.” (Dai Sijie, Balzac & The Little Chinese Seamstress)
- Make a list of parts of a tree: roots, trunk, branches, leaves, fruits
- Ask students to match the following literary elements to a part of the tree: cultural/historical inspirations (roots); key plot events (trunk), characters & their characteristics (branches); figurative language, symbolism, word choice (leaves); overall meaning (fruits)
- Focus students on a novel or short story you have read in class. Ask them to draw a tree for that story, labeling each part of the tree with appropriate language or quotations from the story.
- A Powerpoint explaining the project, including a completed example, can be downloaded from http://tulsagrad.ou.edu/japanresources/new%20curriculum.htm (Scroll down to "high school" section and select the last link on the list, "The Strory Tree: Using Metaphor to Understand Literature.")
