Today we did a activity in class where we could not talk/communicate. We had to create a communication board and use the words and phrases on our board to communicate to our partners. It was very difficult to speak without a voice, you say more than you think throughout a day, you would think you would just need to say “hi” and “how are you” or “help”. But  you need so many more words to be able to make plans with a friend or hold a simple conversation. The purpose of this activity was to show how the main character (Melody) has to live and how she is forced to communicate to others and how frustrating it is for her.

A few examples of words I had on my communication board is: “could you help”, “Yes/No”, “Where is…” “I don’t understand”, “To the right of..”. I chose “I don’t understand” because if I didn’t have that on my board school would be very difficult. If I don’t know how to do a project or something they are explaining isn’t making sense I can simply point to “I don’t understand”. Have”Could you help” is a must especially with not being able to move say you drop your pencil or you fall off your chair. If I had to do this activity again I would definitely change some words. Before you participate in  this activity you never really think about how many words you use even in just one class, all the simple words it takes to ask like “when is lunch?”. I would definitely use some more add some more simple phrases like “How do we do this”, or “What do we do for this?”.

My experience of being non-verbal for ten minutes was difficult and frustrating. It is easy to tell non-verbal being an obstacle. It was hard and took a lot longer to communicate using only your thumbs to point at words. It took a while to find the words and even say phrases like “What time is it?”. During this activity it was aggravating to not be able to just speak and say what you want to say, and not have to take so long to say what you want.

This didn’t really change the way I view Melody but how I feel for her, because when I first started reading I could only picture how hard it was to not be able to say what you want but after doing the non-verbal communication activity I know what it was like and so now I understand what she has to go through every single day. Living in what she has to go through everyday made me feel even worse for her. This will impact the way I view the rest of the story because I know how annoying, and frustrating it is for Melody everyday.