Reading Notes, Laos, Part B

This part contained many stories that I enjoyed however my favorite was "A Boy of the City Streets." This story began when three men approached a boy on the outskirts of a town. The boy asked where the men were going and as they were wise men, they grew angry when he spoke. So they caught him and planned to sell him. They traveled to another town, and on the way tried to get rid of him. Eventually they wanted him to go into the city for fire, and he said he will if he could tie them to a post. They agreed and the boy went into the town, and eventually sold the three wise men. I dont think that there is very much I could change in this story because its so simple and short but I could at least change the setting, or the wording to make it more present day. 

(Town in Laos, Pixabay)

Bibliography: Laos Folk-Lore by Katherine Neville Fleeson link to reading

Reading Notes, Laos, Part A

(Elephants Trunk, Flickr)

This week I chose to read Asian Folktales, called Laos. The first part of this collection of stories was interesting. I read about a lot of things including mystical spirits, giants and cannibals which I was definitely not expecting. The story in this part that I found most interesting was called Why the Lip of the Elephant Droops. There are 12 girls, whose parents abandon them in the woods (this part reminded me of Hansel and Gretel). A women finds them and says she will give them a home, if they will only play with her daughter. For a while they all lived in harmony until the women begins to go into the woods for a short time. She tells the girls not to go into the garden and they obey the first time. The second time they walk into the garden and see human bones. They ran away and climbed into an elephants mouth to hide from the women. When the girls climbed into its mouth however, part of one's dress hung out, and the women saw and cursed the elephant to have a trunk for the rest of its life. A trunk that looked like a garment. I just really like elephants, so to hear this folktale from a different country about why they have trunks was interesting. If I choose this story to rewrite however, I will not be making the woman a cannibal.

Bibliography: Laos Folklore by Katherine Neville Fleeson Link to the reading

Story: The Cruel Crane Outwitted

There once was a crane

(The Crane and the Fish, John D. Batten)

Some fish, a crab
Who lived in a pond that was oh so drab
The fish began to disappear
So the crane said
I know of a place not far from here
The water there is cool and clear
And we will all have nothing to fear
I can take you there one at a time
Where you can live peacefully for a lifetime
He took a fish in his mouth and flew away
But instead of saving he choose to slay
He continued to move the fish day by day
And left the bones beside the pond
Until all the fish were gone and conned
Only the crab remained
The crane flew towards the pond but the crab saw the bones
He knew what was happening and let out a groan
To avoid certain death the crab knew what to do
He strangled the crane and started his life anew

Authors Note: The original story has the same plot as the story above. The only thing I changed was I made it into a poem/story that rhymed.

Bibliography: The Cruel Crane Outwitted by Joseph Jacobs link to reading

Indian Fairy Tales, Reading Notes, Part A

(The Crane, John Dickson Batten)

This week I read Indian Fairy Tales. My favorite story in this collection was called The Cruel Crane Outwitted. This story was about a crane, who was having trouble finding food. So he told the fish that it was unsafe to stay in their current pond and he could move them to a new home. One at a time he took the fish in his mouth and "moved" them to the new pond, but was really eating them. Eventually he took a crab to the new pond, but the crane transported him around his neck. The crab saw the fish bones on the ground and knew what was happening so he killed the crane. Maybe for my story this week I can make this story have a happy ending, where the crane and fish and crab live peacefully together.

Bibliography: Indian Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs link to reading

Week 4 Review

As I was looking over the previous weeks announcements, I found that there was a lot of important information that I missed. A lot of which were updates on the assignments due. So re-reading the announcements helped as now I can be 100% sure that I didn't miss anything important. My favorite thing from the announcements was a graphic, which is posted below. It was posted on Thursday, September 15th. Here's the link to that days announcements: http://ouclassannouncements.blogspot.com/2016/09/thursday-september-15.html

(Cloth vs. Clothes)

Tech Tip: Google Site Website

I just made a website for my storybook! Go check it out if you want! The link is https://sites.google.com/site/mythologyfolklorestorybook/. It was super easy and took barely any time at all so try to make one!

Feedback Focus

(Timing Method)

Out of the three strageties, the one that was most useful to me was reading out loud. This was because  I tend to read really fast, so I end up skipping a lot of the important details. By reading out loud, it forced me to slow down and really make sure that I read every single word in the story. The one that helped me the least was the timing strategy. This strategy just stressed me out because I felt like I was running out of time and I had the read the story super fast in order to finish in time. For the reading out loud strategy, the biggest advantage was it slowed your reading speed down. The biggest disadvantage is you have to be in a place where you are able to read out loud. For the copy and paste method, the biggest advantage is that you are able to take notes while reading, and also are able to keep track of how much you read. The biggest disadvantage is that it takes a little bit more time, and you have to stop after every paragraph in order to take notes on what you just read. The biggest advantage to the timing strategy is that it gives you a time limit, so you are basically forcing yourself to just read for 10 minutes and do nothing else. The biggest disadvantage is that sometimes the story is really long and you can't finish reading it in by when the timer goes off. I probably would only use the reading out loud strategy in the future, as I really didn't like the other two very much. I'm a really big color person so a strategy I use is to copy the story into word, and insert notes into the story in a different color. So if I had a really strong reaction to a certain part, then I would type my notes in a different color directly after that part. So its kind of like the copy and paste method, but I don't delete the story.