A Visit from the Goon Squad

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“Story Swap”

In this activity, students retell a favorite story—fiction or nonfiction—in a different format as a way to think about Egan’s choices about form and content.

Think of your favorite story. Now, how can you tell it differently? Take 5 minutes to either write down how you might tell this story using a different form (like a video or a podcast) or to start a sample of the story if you’re using a written medium like a news article or a poem.

After 5 minutes, get into a group with 2 other people and, for 15 minutes, share what you came up with, giving a brief synopsis of the story and how you would tell it differently.

At the end, come together and discuss the following questions:

1. What was it like to use a different form to tell this story?

2. How might the lesson or takeaway from the story change?

3. How might Egan’s novel be different if she had told it differently?

Teaching Suggestion: Connect this difference in form back to students’ understanding of Time and Meaning. How does meaning change with form? What would it be like to condense or lengthen their story?