Sandra K. Friday
The storyboard for
A Greedy Friend
will be easy and brief, considering the whole story fits on an eight and a half by eleven-inch page. It is also a good transition from viewing films, to reading literature, to planning their own stories for the final project.
This story could be a self-assessment activity in which, once more students practice their Language Arts skills in response to
the essential questions,
and also demonstrate for themselves the skills they have learned: (a) an initial response following a reading; (b) how a character grows and/or changes; (c) how a passage or quote they choose is significant to the story; (d) how they connect to the story; (e) how a conflict can be experienced with levels of anxiety; (f) what the lesson or theme is; (g) whether and how it has the characteristics of an effective or good story; and finally (h) their storyboard with a representation of each scene with a caption. ( For (b) how a character grows or changes in the story, see Lesson plan # 1.)
The Greedy Friend
is a story set in a Muslim culture where the cadi's or judge's ruling is based on traditional Islamic religious law. According to the story, the punishment for a thief is to chop off his hands. That is the punishment that Anpu wants the judge to render on his greedy
friend
Bata, who he thinks stole the gold coins that Anpu had buried in the back yard before he went on a journey to visit his sick father. Anpu becomes very frustrated when the judge inquires whether Anpu saw Bata take the gold coins.
Not only did Anpu not see Bata take the coins, although he is certain that he did, the cadi admits to Anpu that Bata bribed him to not listen to him when Anpu came accusing Bata of stealing. The plot thickens! First Anpu has the anxiety of what to do with his money while he is on his journey to keep it safe from his friend who has turned greedy; then he has the heightened anxiety of learning from the cadi that he does not plan to mete out the traditional punishment to Bata because, the cadi says he feels it is too harsh, and Anpu admits that he did not see Bata steal the coins. Anpu's anxiety level rises yet again when he learns that the cadi has taken a bribe in coins from Bata. While it is Bata who has taken Anpu's coins, the conflict in the story is between Anpu and the cadi.
The cadi shows Anpu how to bring Bata to justice that teaches him a hard lesson, and the cadi also teaches Anpu a profound lesson about punishment and justice. In the end, Anpu gets all of his gold coins back and Bata gets punished. In the end, the reader also learns a very significant lesson about justice.
Students might brainstorm evidence that this story takes place in a Muslim culture or, at the very least, that it takes place in a culture other than their own.
The names cadi, Anpu, and Bata are give-aways, as is the use of gold coins, and so is the traditional punishment for burglary.
This short, short story has all of the skills that the Language Arts CAPT measures, a. through h. Students who are able to demonstrate aptitude in these skills, have hard evidence that they have mastered them.