Helping Students Understand Point of View

This chapter goes into great depth telling how to educate ourselves and teach students about point of view.

One way to establish a "mindfulness" that will require students to reflect on inferred knowledge they would use in a dramatic activity. The authors promote using drama throughout the book, especially for learning characters, setting and point of view. Making sure that the drama activity encompasses anyone or some or one strategy from the list I wrote in my last blog.

Another way to effectively teach point of view is using simulated texts. Simulated texts are a useful tool because they provide repeated practice with a specific strategy. The authors refer to this as a "concentrated sample". They recommend doing simulated text lessons after introducing point of view and participating in a drama activity.

What would follow after simulated text lessons would be to use student writing. The authors encourage student writings to be used in a number of ways because it can be very powerful to help them understand what they need to do as readers. Requiring students to write a monologue of their own gives them the ability to write about a reliable or unreliable narrator. Have the students read their monologues out loud and after each reading have the rest of the class assess the narrator's reliability and discuss the clues that drew them to their final assessment.

Once you have progressed the class in their learning utilize popular cultural material. Films and television shows because many of them will tell stories from multiple perspectives. You can utilize the website www.cinemagora.co.uk/tag-7347-multiple-perspectives.html gives a list of the best multiple perspectives voted on by people who visit this website. Using television shows with multiple characters and having students tell the story from specific characters point of view.

Lastly, music. It is another way to help give students an understanding of point of view. Many songs feature dramatized narrators such as Randy Newman's "Short People". Many people interpreted this song at face value and took offence to it, while in reality it was an ironic monologue. Bruce Springsteen has written many monologues and there are countless others from many other artists for teachers to chose from.