Reflection on Mouse Activity

Activity 1

Partner A describes images on screen to partner B, who has their eyes closed.

Activity 2

Having had the images on screen described to them partner B opens their eyes and uses the images to tell a story to partner A, who has their eyes closed.




What does the exercise tell us about narrative – it’s characteristics and form?

In the second activity when partner B took on the role of narrator, every person in the group adopted a child friendly voice. They seemed to assume the role of the teacher sitting the children down at carpet time and telling them a story. I could see people using intonation and facial expression to add drama and excitement to their story.
It became apparent that most children’s stories seem to have a moral message. In my story I told of the mouse’s struggle to build a paper aeroplane to get where he wanted to go, but he got there in the end through perseverance (hooray!). Also descriptions were elaborated on to give the listener a vivid sense of imagery. Most people assigned a name to the mouse, which gives the lead character an identity and persona which is essential to any captivating children’s book.
I could hear many people using the opening line ‘once upon a time’, which I also used. This is typical to the structure of many children’s stories. They often follow a standard formulaic structure in which there is a distinct, opening, middle and end. I also heard as we were drawing the stories to a close a few people used ‘Happily ever after’. It seems imperative to tie up the loose ends in children’s stories and there is that assurance that all is good and that goodness has prevailed.



What does the exercise tell us about the relationship between pictures and words?


Certainly a great deal can be inferred through pictures and I was amazed at how different the stories were amongst the group. There were many images which were fairly blank which left it open as to how the narrator could interpret the story. In my story the mouse was upset that there were no words on the page therefore he managed to cut out the paper to reveal the picture. There was a certain artistic licence which in ones interpretation of the images.
In Activity B we were shown some extra information; we were given a title ‘Trapped in a Book’. Once we were given this title to match up to the pictures that artistic licence had to be somewhat tailored around the title and was bound to follow on and elaborate on it. So when words and pictures are together it appears they are inextricably linked. When given just words to read we have free reign to imagine events as we choose, similarly when presented with pictures alone we can create our own meaning. Pictures and words together create a very guided and focused reading experience.

What were the differences between ‘telling’ and ‘describing’ the images both as speaker and listener?

The person describing the images in Activity A took on a very matter of fact tone whereas the person telling the story in Activity B seemed to adopt as I mentioned above a child like, animated manner designed to capture the listener.
Also in Activity A many of the listeners grew frustrated as they were unable to make sense of the images being described. The describer here had no idea what image was coming next so they were forced to think on their feet. This made the description seem disjointed. However the story tellers in Activity B were armed with the description that they had just received, the title and the images in front of them. This allowed them to develop a fuller and more interesting story to amuse the listener.

These discussion questions really confused me but it is so clear after reading your response. I like the bit about the assumption of words and pictures being inextricably linked it is so true!

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