"My hope is that if the visual portrait of a story (VPS) doesn't work for you, something else will" (Ohler, 2008, pg. 113).
Ohler's reassuring opening words says it all.
As Christina mentioned in her blog, many of the ideas presented in this chapter (and book) can be easily adapted to my classroom instruction. I really appreciated this chapter because I immediately thought about how certain story maps would help certain students in my classroom.
For those visual learners like myself, I immediately made a connection with the Simplified Joseph Campbell Map because of the circular shape (Fig. 9.2, pg. 115). The idea about how a character begins at one "place," and transforms as he/she travels along the journey to finally "[come] full circle" home (pg. 115) made the most sense to me in terms of creating a story based on this model.
Non-linear thinkers who appreciate "a more free-form approach to story mapping" might gravitate towards the Treasure Map (Fig. 9.3, pg. 116) or the Adapted Story Map model (Fig. 9.4, pg. 117) because it would allow these students to "more accurately represent the action of [their] story" (pg. 116). The ranging peaks and "reversals" remind me of how some of students might describe the action of their story. These students may be my more "creative" students who don't like to follow the straight path like of the Aristotle Story Map (fig. 9.1, pg. 114). I myself also would find it difficult to match the action of my story using the direct line, and I would prefer to create the path accordingly (with many ups and downs).
Lastly, my English Learners (ELs) would greatly benefit from The Story Spine (Fig. 9.7, pg. 121) because of the sentence starters that sets up the most important parts of a story. EL students can even draw a picture to describe the action if they are unable to write it clearly. Ohler also described how he used this story map as an oral activity to create good stories which also would help my EL students develop better language skills. I think this model would also help students write summaries of the stories that they've read in class as well. With more practice of summarizing stories, eventually they would be able to create their own story!
While reading this book, I do seem to see the application in a K-12 environment more than older students. But I found this chapter to be more inclusive and eye-opening about students who might be more sophisticated, no? And I'm finding others' blogs do highlight stuff I did not really see or think of.
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