Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Week 9: Storytelling "We finally meet!"


Mrs. Steinberg and her students started to settle back into the classroom after they came back from the fire drill. Most of the students were booming with excitement because they had gotten out of class for fifteen minutes. After bathroom and water breaks, Mrs. Steinberg finally got her students to calm down so she could finish the rest of the story about Shikhandi.   

"Okay, where did I leave off?" Mrs. Steinberg thought to herself. "Oh yes, Shikhandi is making her big return to the palace. But a few characters that I will now introduce you to are: Draupadi, "her sister" and Dhai Ma, one of Draupadi's nurses."  

"As Shikhandi made her grand entrance through the doors of the palace Draupadi peeked through the doors to see the arrival of Shikhandi. As she looked around, she noticed that there was a sense of fear in the eyes of the people of the kingdom. Draupadi thought to herself, "Who was this Shikhandi figure that everyone once whispered about as I was growing up?"   

"Daughter!" King Draupada yelled out. A little teardrop started to fall from Draupadi's eyes as she heard her father call someone else daughter. Draupadi ran over to Dhai Ma and completely broke down in tears within her embrace. Dhai Ma looked at Draupadi and asked her, "What's wrong?"   
Draupadi said, "How could my father keep her existence hidden from me for twelve years? I always wanted to meet the great Shikhandi everyone would talk about. Every time I would bring up her name, Father would get so angry with me." 


As Mrs. Steinberg paused to check out the expressions of her students faces, one of her students yelled at her to continue on with the story.    

"Dhai Ma reassured Draupadi that she shouldn’t cry and that her father did not mean any harm. Dhai Ma started to tell Draupadi the story about Shikhandi and the reason her father never mentioned her."    

"Now, kids, remember back to the beginning of the story when Shikhandi was first born and the Queen played a trick on the King by saying that Shikhandi was a boy. Her white lie created such an uproar in the kingdom and Shikhandi ran away."

Dhai Ma started to tell the story to Draupadi, "Well, Draupadi, rumor has it that for the past few years she had barricaded herself in her fortress of solitude. She has been out there in the forest all alone without her mother, the Queen, and father, the King. Eventually she had to learn how to survive on her own, by finding shelter and hunting for food. One day while she was out trying to find food, she came across a hurt deer that had been shot in its stomach. She watched it as it suffered an agonizing death. She promised herself that from that day she wouldn't harm a animal, so she became a vegetarian." 

Mrs. Steinberg paused from the story and explained to her class what a vegetarian was. "A vegetarian is someone who does not eat meat, or any animal products." 

One of the boys shouted out loud, "Well, how is Shikhandi supposed to be strong, if she doesn’t eat meat? Meat is supposed to make you really strong." 

Mrs. Steinberg looked at the little boy and laughed. "Yes, meat is very important, but there are other ways that you can get protein to make you really strong," Mrs. Steinberg added. As the room started to get quiet she decided to continue on with the story. 

"Shikhandi was like no other. She would bear the harsh winter cold without a jacket so that she could become mighty and strong." 

Before Mrs. Steinberg could continue with the story she was interrupted with a sly comment from one of her students. "So what you're saying Mrs. Steinberg is if I stand outside in the freezing cold during the winter time, I will become as strong as an ox?" 

"No, Landon," Mrs. Steinberg replied, "things were different back then than they are now. You could catch pneumonia and get really sick if you do that." "Shall I continue with the story?" Mrs. Steinberg said with a stern tone.   

"After Dhai Ma revealed to Draupadi the news of her oldest sister, she was more intrigued to meet Shikhandi. "Every story has two sides to it. I want to hear hers." Dhai Ma hugged Draupadi tightly and told her that Shikhandi was dying to meet her. Draupadi rushed to her room to get ready to meet her sister. She changed her outfit about four times and changed her hairdo three times. Before she could finish getting ready, she was interrupted by a hard and steady knock at her bedroom door.   

(To be continued)   

Author's Note: So since we got to choose which reading we wanted to do for the remainder of the semester, I decided to stick with the story of Shikhandi. Professor Gibbs gave a good book to read for the rest of the semester and the book is called Palace of Illusions. I decided to continue with the Shikhandi theme, but add a little twist to it and add the sister that she has yet to meet, Draupadi. I thought that it was interesting how they brought Shikhandi back, and I want to get the perspective of Draupadi on the arrival of her oldest sister coming back to the palace.The one thing that I thought was funny was that Draupadi never knew that she had a sister. She had heard all of these stories about the great Shikhandi, but she took them as just being rumors. Until Shikhandi came back to the palace. This was perfect for my story because it could build the suspense for the next part of the story that I am planning to do. I didn’t want to give too much information, just so I could make it interesting for my readers for next week.  

Bibliography:  
Book: Palace of Illusions 
Author: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni 

9 comments:

  1. What a great story! I really enjoyed the student to teacher interaction that you provided. I think it was cute the way “London” interrupted I could really imagine a student doing that. I think that the mysticism in the story that captivated those students should be used more. Just a note, your author’s notes decided to shoot off into oblivion, or in other words your text did not stay in the text box.

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  2. Jordan, I haven’t read the book that your story is based off of, so I’m glad I selected your portfolio to read. It is nice to get exposure to new material through my peers. As far as formatting goes, your font was a little small on my screen and scrunched together. You might just play around with font size! I thought it was a very clever idea to have the teacher reading a story to her students. I also enjoyed the bit about the fire drill at the beginning. It really set the stage, and made the whole story more realistic. Since the teacher in your story is reading another story that has dialogue, some of the quotations are a little hard to follow. There may be a way to alter your formatting to make the dialogue a little easier for your readers to follow. Overall, great work! I enjoyed reading!

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  3. This story is so interesting and I'm glad I got to continue reading it! This story is definitely as strong, if not stronger, than the first one that I read. I love the way you interrupt the story to have the kids comment on different aspects and the way you alter the story to have the kids understand it is awesome. I also think it's interesting how captivated the children are by the story because I feel just the same way. You do really well with the transitions between story and commentary by the students and the teacher and I like the way you incorporated Draupadi into the story. I have not read this particular story, so I'm not sure how much you altered (other than setting it in a classroom) but you told a fantastic story yet again! I love the way you add suspense to the story by dropping off at a crucial part. There's a knock at the door and I can't wait to know who it is! Good job!

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  4. Hey, Jordan. I really liked this story. Both stories of yours that I have read have had great themes to them. You start the story off perfectly. Everyone remembers the excitement they felt when there was a fire drill and experience 15 minutes of freedom. I know at least for me, that is what really caught my attention and drew me into the story. I think the story time was a great way to tell this tale too. You had the one section when the teacher says something like “remember from the beginning of the story”, that was a really clever way to remind the reader about the context of the story in case they had forgotten what exactly was going on. Also, I think you picked a great story to write about in the first place. That story had always been interesting to me. I look forward to reading more of your stuff!

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  5. Hi again. I chose to read one of your stories again because I really enjoy your portfolio. I like that you are continuing with the class room theme. I remember when I read one of the first stories that I really liked this theme. I liked the flow of your story this time. I thought the spacing in between paragraphs was off. I found myself really distracted by the spacing between paragraphs. The font size was great and I did not have to adjust anything to read your story. I also thought your grammar was great. I also really liked how the kids would interrupt the professor to ask questions. You did a great job with this story. I honestly have very little to comment about beside the spacing. I also really liked your picture for the story. It added a lot to what you were trying to do. Great job.

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  6. I really like your story.I love how you set the story up as a teacher telling it to the class. I felt like it truly was a teacher trying to tell the story because of how many times she was interrupted by the class with funny comments. I think that your story was very easy to read and I didn't notice any errors in it so I think you did pretty good on that. I like how Draupadi reacted to finding out she gets to go see her sister. She changed her clothes numerous times which shows how excited and nervous she was about the whole thing. I like that she is wanting to hear her sister's point of view and is willing to go see her. I think this was a really good concept and I enjoyed reading it. I look forward to reading some more of your stories for future weeks.

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  7. This story was somewhat confusing for me. I am not familiar with the story of Shikhandi and Draupadi, and it felt like your story glazed over some important details. You first began with a scene where Draupadi meets Shikhandi, and you then briefly mention something about Shikhandi’s backstory, which I did not understand. Next, you jump to Draupadi in the forest, but you don’t tell us how she got there. Finally, you say that Shikhandi did not wear a jacket so that she would become strong. I don’t understand what this has to do with the rest of the story. Instead of jumping through a bunch of scenes, pick one item you want to address and stick to that for your story. At the end of your story, I felt like I got a bunch of pieces, but I don’t know how they fit together.

    A few comments on the formatting on your blog itself: Increase the margins on your posts. The text goes right up to the edge of the box and words often spill from one line to the other. The size of the sidebar is also distracting. Remove the extra “Labels” box on the left side of the screen.

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  8. 2Jordan, your story was definitely different that the others that I have come across so far. I had read one of your stories (the one based on Shrek) before, so I was interested to see what else you could do. Overall, I really like how you were able to present the story of Draupadi and Dhai Ma, which has been one of my favorites from the beginning of the semester. I really liked how you situated the story as if a schoolteacher was relaying it to her young students, since that is, in a way, similar to what we have been doing. I also especially liked the first image of Draupadi that you chose to introduce your story.

    My only critiques lie in formatting. The large spacing between paragraphs which makes the story feel a bit long and stretched. Also, something happened with your author’s note to make it read the entire paragraph horizontally across the page.

    Good luck with the rest of the project!

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  9. Hi Jordan! This was a really interesting re-telling of Shikhandi's story. I'm not very familiar with the source material, but it seemed like you mostly kept the details of the original story the same and incorporated your own touches with the extra story about the class. It was really interesting to see how these dynamics built off of each other, and I think adding the students and their commentary is a great way to get readers to engage with the text because these are all questions or thoughts that we would have as children reading this story, One issue I do see with the story is the spacing of passages. Having all of these blank spaces between your text makes the story seem really long and daunting; Readers will be less likely to read everything closely when it seems like the story is so long. It also creates unnecessary breaks in the action. I really like your prose and your dialogue is natural and believable, but having these spaces creates a really weird rhythm where I don't think I would have gotten as drawn in as I would have otherwise. Other than that, it seems like your story is in really good shape!

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