Blog Entry #9

 I really enjoyed reading the different elements of narrative in Tompkins (2012) for this week. I have learned these through elementary school but being able to have a review on them was very refreshing. There were actually somethings that I truthfully never knew and I was actually very shocked. For example, I knew of third person and how it could be omniscient but I have never heard of objective.

I thought it was really cool getting to learn about the different types of point of views especially the three different branches of third person, the one I really loved though was objective (p. 182). I don't know why but it really stood out to me because I feel like a lot of the books I have recently read for my students in UPK have been objective. It's where it kind of just seems like you are watching a film. We have read a lot of folktales and I would say the Three Little Pigs was definitely a book where it is more of an objective third person than anything.

Another thing I believed I and a lot of others have always gotten confused when it comes to elements of a story is the theme. The theme and the mood were something I always got confused but this chapter really helped me understand what the theme really is. Most people, including me at some point thought the theme was just the topic, what was this story about? Instead, it's the meaning behind the story it's literally the "moral of the story" (p. 186). I have found that Tompkins does a great job explaining and breaking down concepts into the simplest way possible and it makes it so much easier to understand. 

After reading this chapter I feel that I am very confident in being able to teach my students these different elements now. I really like the method where students get to retell the story. The two figures I really enjoy the most are, the figure 8-2, I like the idea of letting students tell the story by drawing the different events from the beginning, the two middle events and then the ending (p. 191). The other figure I really like is figure 8-3 which is giving students the chance to write their own narrative stories and giving them a self-assessment checklist (p. 197). Students will have a checklist of questions to answer about their characters to make sure these are all things they have included in their writing. I feel these are two really great ideas to incorporate in classrooms.