Exploring Roles and Definitions of Fiction Across the Disciplines Toggle navigation

Fiction Across the Disciplines

Johnathan

History- The study of past events, particularly human affairs. Fiction- Prose literature, esp. short stories and novels, about imaginary events and people. -What can be known as fact, and what do historians infer or embellish about historical events? -The study of historiography goes in depth of what is really true. -Interviewing a former teacher of mine he told me about a historiography class he once taught which showed the American viewpoint on the American Revolution and the British viewpoint. -The American viewpoint was that we were being taxed had no representation or rights. -The British viewpoint was that Americans wanted to send troops but no one wanted to pay taxes. -Mr. Kelly told me he uses fiction to make his classes more interesting. -Ex. He likes to play games such as "What If?" "What if Adolf Hitler's teacher told him he was one of the best artist shes ever seen, maybe he would of gone into art instead of politics." - Using fiction Mr. Kelly said "it allows you to look at history in a different light and allows to kids to explore and change things around." - Prof. Lavender teaches a course on historiography and uses philosophy to question and debate what is real or not. - Teacher Tarry Lindquist uses fiction in her classroom to make the class more interested and make historical facts up for debate. - Nothing in history can be for certain based on documents, they could be forged or tampered with. - Using fiction in history you must not compromise information but you can give a story more life and it allows you to give characters life and more personality. - British historical fiction writer Jill Paton, has to keep historical information correct while giving it more life using fiction, being able to expand on characters, plot, or setting while still keeping historical facts true. -"In certain interpretations every fact is fiction because it is a representation of something that happened" - Prof. Rodgers - Through this project I've learned fiction is an important part of history, It helps teaching it and find what is real or not.

Stephen

Carina

Christina

Teaching Children About Fiction & How Children View Fiction

• When teaching elementary students, teachers open the door to the world of fiction
• Fiction has different forms – contemporary realism, fantasy, historical fiction, poetry, folk tales, myths and epics – These all have their parts in children’s literature.
• Unlike older students’ books, children books take the form of picture books in which visual and verbal texts form an interconnected whole.
• Fiction allows children to explore life through literature
• It serves children in 4 major ways: helps them to better understand themselves, others, their world and the values of written language.
• When children read fiction they put themselves in the role of one of the characters.
• With fiction, children can move beyond the outer edges of reality and place themselves in worlds of make-believe, unfettered by the constraints of everyday life.

Interview

• Teachers all have different perspectives on how to teach fiction to their students.
• While high school and college teachers/ professors are introducing students to get in between the lines of fiction stories; elementary teachers are putting the idea of fiction into childrens heads by introducing them to small stories with picture books, etc.
• While interviewing a college professor, she stated that when you’re teaching little kids you are more creative and experimental… they have more hands on activities, however teaching college students fiction, they are learning to define things in this field of study.
•  When interviewing, the teacher said it’s much harder teaching fiction than other subjects. There is so much you need to become familiar with when you start with fiction.
• It is important to connect to the subject because fiction has many different purposes.