Another use of digital Scavenger Hunt that can be reported online via a Discussion Board or Blog in a course can be the definition of terms relevant to the discipline and using examples of the terms in texts (online or otherwise) you are reading as a class.
In an African-American Literature course, for instance, the instructor can ask students to define and then find examples of imagery in a novel that employs a lot of imagery, or metaphor in a short story that uses metaphors as the most common point of comparison. Additionally, to add a creative element, students can write their own sentence utilizing imagery or metaphor after they provide an example from the author.
In a text that is particularly rich in various literary devices, or as part of review for the entire course, students can again do a game of telephone, where the first student may discuss simile and provide an example, then “tag” the next student to discuss allegory, and the second student will define allegory then provide an example. This is an example of students playing a game of telephone using quotes from a text.
For our example, we can use Nella Larsen’s Passing, which is available for free to students online.
A student who will discuss metaphor, whether she is already familiar with the term from the class or not, will develop a working definition for herself and her classmates, present a metaphor from Larson’s text, and then write her own metaphor:
“Metaphor” is defined as “a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable” (dictionary.com), meaning that metaphors are saying that something is something else without using “like” or “as,” and is pretty much a comparison.
Nella Larsen uses a metaphor on page 10 of Passing: “The automobiles parked at the kerbs were a dancing blaze, and the glass of the shop-windows threw out a blinding radiance.” The metaphor part is where she says that “automobiles…were a dancing blaze,” because this is not literally true, but it gives the reader an image of the cars being very hot and shining in the sun. The reader can see this because of the context around this sentence, below:
My example of a metaphor is “The trees are dancers swaying in the wind.”
This student example actually cites a definition, which is not required, but shows that students can also hunt for definitions they are not familiar with online, therefore teaching themselves and their classmates. More importantly, she defines the word using her own language. Next, the “scavenger hunt” component is finding a use of metaphor in the text at hand. She explains the quote she uses, and because this is an online text, she also points to the page using an online share tool, provided by archive.org. Finally, she comes up with her own metaphor.
In addition to having students interact by tagging each other with different literary devices (or other relevant terms to the class), students can also explicate each other’s creative example. So the student after the example above can explain that her sentence, “The trees are dancers swaying in the wind,” is comparing trees to dancers because with the wind it looks like their movements are graceful and intentional, like a dance.
Scavenger Hunt Assignment: Literary Devices in Texts
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