Unscripted Anecdote: Hi everyone, so for task three I wanted to share a story of this past year and how it’s been raising salmon in my grade 5 and 6 classroom so I’ve decided to do this and kinda do like a cross curricular unit with social studies and science to talk about natural resources, as well as salmon within our ecosystem and connected to indigenous education as well so I thought this would be a great opportunity for my intermediate class to really understand how salmon play I really keep part in our ecosystem as well as teaching them some really essential skills of how to care for another living thing however, I didn’t realize how difficult this would be and the problems that might come up when I went to the orientation to learn about how to care for salmon and teach it in my classroom the woman organizing this program kind of gave us a warning she said if you don’t change the water enough, the salmon will die. If you change the water too much the salmon will die. If you over feed them the salmon will die. If you don’t have the filter on the salmon will die. Basically I was scared so you could imagine how I felt when I actually went to to teach salmon in my class and the fish kept dying I had no idea what I was doing wrong. I had my class changed the filter. I had my class changed the water in the tank and they kept dying. I then had the organizer come in and help us figure out what the issue was but she even couldn’t figure out what it was and she said maybe we just had like a bad batch of salmon this year. I then realized one day that I accidentally told my students the wrong measurement for how much chlorine they needed to put in the tank when I realize this, and that I was the one to blame, I felt so awful. I decided that I needed to have a conversation with my students and take accountability of what I had done. I was really afraid of what my students would say because they grew really attached to the salmon and we’re always devastated when they found out one had died when I had this conversation with my students instead of them being upset, they started laughing at the situation and said oh Miss Veltri, you do have the memory of a goldfish. This was something I would often joke about with my class as I’m quite a forgetful person. I was so surprised by my class understanding and kindness. I think this experience show that even teachers make mistakes and it really helped create an even better classroom community
Analysis:
- How does the text deviate from conventions of written English? Reading over my text to speech story made me cringe. I am embarrassed to see how many run-on sentences there are. There are many long, unbroken sentences that would typically be separated by periods, commas, or other punctuation in formal writing. My story also uses conversational phrases like “kinda,” “you could imagine how I felt,” and “oh Miss Veltri,” which are typical in oral storytelling but not in formal written English. I also noticed I repeated myself a lot throughout the story using phrases like “the salmon will die” to add humour, a technique common in speech but less so in writing. The story also lacks formal paragraph breaks and organization. It flows as one continuous thought, similar to how someone might speak.
- What is “wrong” in the text? What is “right”? /What are the most common “mistakes” in the text and why do you consider them “mistakes”?Some things that I would consider “wrong” in the story is the missing punctuation. I did not dictate “period” or “comma” when speaking, therefore there are missing commas, periods, and proper sentence breaks. The lack of punctuation throughout my story made the story unclear at times. There were also “mistakes” in grammar because it misheard me when speaking. For example, we’re always devastated when they found out one had died.” The story also lacked in transition words making the story harder to follow for the listener.I would consider the authenticity of my story “right” because it had a conversational tone which made the story feel more genuine and relatable. I also think that trying to add in humour and vulnerability made my story more engaging as readers could emotionally connect to my experience. In terms of oral story telling I think the repetition and casual tone work well to mimic the rhythm of speech and draw the listener in.
- What if you had “scripted” the story? What difference might that have made?I would have loved to been able to create a script for the story. I sometimes struggle with keeping ideas organized when using voice to text tools, so having a script would have made me feel more comfortable when telling my story. I think this would have helped me organized my story better because I would have been able to create clear topic sentences to help the listener follow along easier. I would have also created a theme in my story like learning from mistakes or classroom community to create a stronger emotional impact. Finally, a scripted version might have created a more professional tone, although it would have lost some authenticity in the process.
- In what ways does oral storytelling differ from written storytelling? I think that oral storytelling differs from written storytelling in many ways. Oral conversations and stories are often less formal, using natural pauses, gestures, body language and vocal inflections(Gnanadesikan, 2011). In comparison, written storytelling uses clear and detailed paragraphs with proper grammar and punctuation. When reflecting back on my story, I notice the tone and style is very informal as I use slang and informal expressions. Written storytelling does not do this as it typically has a more formal tone that has been edited for these “mistakes”. Oral storytelling also relies on the interaction of the listeners. The people being told the story give the storyteller immediate feedback with their facial reactions and body language. This then can help the storyteller pivot to engage the listener back in. Whereas in written storytelling, the author cannot judge the readers reaction in the moment, therefore they use word choice for impact.
References
Gnanadesikan, A. E., & Wiley Online Library. (2011). The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet (1. Aufl.; 1 ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.