I hope everyone’s practicum is going well! I don’t know whether anyone is checking the blog during practicum, but I thought I would add a bit to my previous post based on an experience I had recently. One of my sponsor teachers took me to the book room today and, lo and behold, Life of Pi was there. I explained to him that we had covered Pi in this class and he was more than willing to share some of his experiences teaching the novel.

He said that his main way of tackling the text was characterization. He had his students do a character sketch for each of the animals on the boat with Pi before they had reached the last part of the book. The students were divided into groups and each group was given either the zebra, Orange Juice, the hyena, and Richard Parker. They had to identify the attitudes and emotions that the animals displayed (fear, dominance, hunger, etc), a physical description of the animals, and describe in depth the area of the life boat that each animal occupied. The students completed the book after this activity and he said that the students were blown away by the end of the book. After they had reached the conclusion, he had them repeat the characterization activity for the cook, the sailor, and Pi’s mother. They were astounded how well the attributes of the animals predicted/coincided with the attributes of the people. As an assessment for this part of the unit, he had the students write an essay on the absence of the tiger as a person on the boat in the “real” story. He said that most of the students thought that Richard Parker was a part of Pi, so he felt that this activity was very successful.

To follow up the characterization activity (especially the part where the students described each animals territory on the boat), each student individually created a travel brochure for an outsider to get to know their way around the life boat. The students had to draw their conceptions of the boat and each animals area. He showed me some of the brochures that he kept and they were amazing.

Just thought I would post this while the conversation was still fresh in my mind. I hope everyone is having a great practicum!