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Maine Samplers Part III Wild Fox by Cherie Mason |
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Illustrated by Jo Ellen McAllister Stammen Summary: Cherie Mason shares her unique relationship with an injured fox in a manner intimate yet straightforward, eloquent yet informative. The audience is both sobered and uplifted. The soft illustrations shimmer with life. An example of a new trend in picture books - that of a lengthened, sophisticated text enriched with art, not just pictures. Level: RL: adult IL: K-adult Themes: red fox, empathy, hunting, Maine Activities: 1. For 3 groups. Second group: Listen to the tape, concentrating on the narrator. Analyze the voice in the same manner as the composition group. Write a "how-to" for voice-recording a story. Third group: Listen to and re-read Wild Fox. What are the qualities of the story that make it so suitable for recording? Are these qualities that ANY story would have to contain to make it suitable for an excellent recording? Select those qualities that are absolute musts and write a "how-to choose a story to record". After presenting their findings to the class, the tape is played and the class offers suggestions and modifications. The three groups next get together and prepare an introductory paragraph to their combined work, make changes in response to class reaction, and publish the results. 2. Upon reading the above publication, each class member searches for and selects one recordable story. Each member evaluates 5 of the proposed stories, using the how-to, and they are then arranged in priority order. Class members sign up for composing, playing, narrating, directing, or recording one of the top stories. The publication is used to accomplish the recordings as well as a gide to final class evaluations. The teams then make suggestions to refine the publication, and an addendum is added. The publication is now ready for distribution. 3. A group of younger students could plan and practise sound effects to add to the cassette tape of Wild Fox. [Footsteps running outside, a door opening, wind howling, crows' racket.] They could re-record the original cassette as they performed their sound effects. Prior to the debut of the now "enhanced" recording before a live audience, the group will describe how they selected the parts to add sound effects to, and how they developed each sound - with demostrations. They might even send a copy to the author and/or River Music. A teacher-made video of the demonstrations could be circulated with the book, the original cassette, and the enhanced cassette. 4. Plan a set of search strategies with a group to locate the fox in art, from cave paintings to contemporary works. [Be sure to include Maine artists, such as Dahlov Ipcar.] Use a color scanner to create a collection on computer, or videotape each selection. Or use reproductions or book illustrations that are available. In a brainstorming kind of way, arrange and rearrange your collection. [Chronologically, men and women artists, type of art, treatment of subject matter, country of origin, for example.] Decide on one or two means of presentation. Write a narrative to accompany the presentation. Depending on the mode of the collection, record, dub, or present the narrative orally. It would be exciting to have two presentations based on two very different ways of organizing the same art. 5. Collect photographs that depict a specific characteristic of red foxes...........fox in love, fox at play, fox the hunter, for example. Collect 5 to 10 facts about this characteristic. Use the photographs and facts to develop a meaningful sequence through scanning, videotaping, or using a camera and copystand. Include a numbering system. Prepare a narration that points out the relevant facts. Give your audience a list of all the facts you found, even ones not depicted in the photos. Present the photographs without narration and ask your audience to write the number of each photograph by any of the facts they think it represents. Now present the photographs with your narration, and have them check their guesses.
6. A class can develop a Wild Fox hypercard stack A sample stack menu is shown above. Students or groups could choose among the topics or other options they or instructors devised. The value of such a stack is that each topic is instantly available. As the stack grows, each topic enhances each other, and students will skip from one to the other and build associations between them, and/or use something from one as they work on another. The topics may be created in formats other than a stack, or just one topic used. 6.a. Foxy Facts. As students explore Wild Fox, they relate to the instructor, away from the book, a fact they found. The instructor writes down the fact, and the student explores a list of found facts to make sure it isn't a repeat, then enters the new fact. [As students browse through the 55 or so facts, they sometimes make associations, such as putting the strawberries and chicken leg together to conclude that foxes are carniverous.] The relating in a student's own words is to make sure the student understands the information as well as practising self-expression. [This activity can be replicated very successfully with lightly fictionalized life cycle animal stories, which abound in picture books. Example - Bear Mouse.] 6.b. New fox information. A printout of the facts from Wild Fox can be broken down by small groups into many different categories. A class comparison and discussion can cluster categories, expand them, wind up with a workable set for researching red foxes and adding to the now categorized Wild Fox facts. Set up 5 teams of 4 students; each team learns how to access fox information from a different medium, such as video; encyclopedia; non-fiction. Each team is then split up among category groups, so that each group now has a "specialist accessor" from a different mode.] Category individuals research, record with citations, get together with the group to collate and chart their new information. [You will find groups directing others to pertinent material - a valuable peer activity. This type of cooperative activity is called Jig Saw.] 6.c. Prequels and Sequels. Individuals or new groups add a chapter to Wild Fox, predicting what might happen to Vicky after his final farewell to Cherie Mason. Others will anticipate how Vicky's life fared up to his accident and his eventual encounter with Cherie Mason, creating a prequel. The charts, available on the classroom walls or in appealing computer formats that could include animation or guessing games, provide scenarios as well as description as well as inspiring facts. Browse for ideas combines content, creativity, and comprehension. 6.d. The art teacher may conduct a hands-on study of how to draw animals, followed by students illustrating their own or another's writing. [A scanner is invaluable in importing student art onto the computer.] 6.e. Vulpine vocabulary. As students come across or research words or phrases that characterize foxes, they design a pop-up card with a cartoon, some other visual, or a presentation of some sort to illustrate the 'foxy' meaning of the vocabulary. The pop-up could translate onto a sheet of paper underlying a cover sheet displaying only the word. These fold-up displays form a bulletin board. 6.f. Fox folklore. Students research Native American fox tales, beginning with the tale in Wild Fox of why foxes have white-tipped tails. One activity is to have students try condensing the tale to one page, then condensing this page to one paragraph, then to one sentence. An exercise in finding "essence". Another option is to prepare a one-screen condensation that includes fox facts found in the tale. Hot buttons underneath these facts take students to an expansion of this information within the 'new fox information' part of the stack. And back. Or the viewer could browse among more new information before returning to the tale. A group of students could study the construction and themes and spirit of these tales, and try using the resulting structure to design their own fox tales. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Further seed IDEAS * Art. End papers....Cherie wanted actual photographs of Vixen as endpapers and she wound up fighting for one small photo on the flyleaf. Collect endpapers of interest artistically or helpfully - sci-fi maps - or humorously to set mood * Cunning Little Vixen opera...are there numerous versions? Music and voice of taped version of Wild Fox. One group of musically inclined students could analyze the composition, effects of changing volume, mood, pacing, and how each relates to the story and to the narrator's voice. Write the results into a 'how-to' create music for a story, and 'how-to' properly record it. Another group do the same with the narrator's part. The two groups choose a number of potential stories to compose music for and to produce a 'quality' cassette. They write down the qualities that they think make them good candidates. Groups go over stories, adding or subtracting qualities as they go, evolving into a choice. The qualities can then be developed into a guide for future choosers. Create tape, using the 'how-to's, and so forth. * Bring to class a science artifact - a fur-hunting trap. Ask the students to sketch it. This could become a title page with some facts verso. Research bans. Science exploration: use estimation, hypothesizing, about force, other physics, develop into experiments - videotape, plan and write and dub a narration. * Art. This book contains quality illustrations! (1) Scan Dahlov Ipcar fox paintings, selections from book, CDROM of national art archives, other sources into a computer program such as hypercard. Be sure that citations are included and are correct. Ask students to sort choices in several different ways. [A good group activity; they could randomly collect material, then sort chronologically, or by style, camouflage, fox's relationship to man as seen by artists (negative or positive). Group members can choose the way they prefer and plan a narrative, presentation, to accompany sequence] [Alternative - each student or each group choose different animal in art.] * The art teacher get involved with a hands-on study of how to draw animals and how some artists draw animals. Students become illustrators of their own or others' text products * Folklore A fox's white tail tip "came" from dragging in snow to erase tracks (pour quois Native American tale). Search folklore for foxy tales and create a hypercard stack of condensed tales with quotes regarding trait or traits of foxes, physical, personality or character. * Local rabies and foxes in USA - in Maine what about fox farms....farming animals for hunting...in Maine? * Animals and play....research fox AND other animals ad play???? National Geographic * foxes in culture cave paintings? biological history of foxes....were there 'dinosaur' foxes? The fox and Native Americans - chief's robe, never blinks, name of tribe or nation, animal most wanted to be, ...other peoples and foxes....Japan and shrines and the messenger of harvest Inare? Prepared by Audrey Conant |
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