Describe how Literature is being taught in the school you are posted to for Teaching Practice?

At Riverside Secondary, Literature is not offered at the Upper Secondary level. Hence, lower-secondary literature lessons are seen as an accompaniment to the students’ English lessons. While there may not be an extensive plan for Lower Secondary Literature, this gives me the opportunity to introduce games and other devices to get the students interested in literature.

For example, while the given worksheet for one particular lesson requires students to write a summary of the chapter, I did a close-reading of the chapter with the students instead. This, I feel, would be more beneficial than writing a summary as Secondary 1 students may not know how to analyze their texts. Furthermore, students can use the reading skills that they pick up from this lesson in their English class, as comprehension is still a key component of their exams.

Literature lessons are very fun for the students, as they do activities that they may not do in other lessons. For example, students were given the opportunity to act out various scenes from their text as they learned how to empathize with the characters.

While students may not realize the difference between English and Literature at this point in their studies, I don’t feel that this hinders their learning. In fact, because of their limited subject options when they are Upper Secondary students, combining English and Literature seems to make lessons more effective.

Lit in Practicum

I am observing secondary 1 and 2 express and normal academic literature. The sec 1s are doing poems (Haiku, Limmerick, etc), sound devices and figurative language. The sec 2s are doing Romeo and Juliet (Abridged). For Romeo and Juliet, my CT uses a lot of ICT in engaging the students as the students are not very interested in literature and find it boring. They are shown clips and images. Even the explanation of terms is done visually as the students have problem grappling with English, furthermore, Shakespearean language. Questioning is used from time to time to help students recap what has been taught and to guide them in understanding the text and deriving their own answer. Close reading is also done in class for the students. Students are to form groups and post blogposts for reflections, keep an actor’s log to reflect on the characters.  They are also assigned to write a short essay and eulogy about the play. At the end, they are to prepare and present a skit for one of the scenes. As for sec 1s, they are taught poetic features through the most basic manner – examples and worksheets to work on. They are then to create their own as a form of assessment.

Blog Entry #1

Pardon the uninspiring title, basically, I am observing Secondary 3 Express and Secondary 2 Normal Academic classes.

For Sec 3E, they are doing Telltale:11 Stories and my CT's focus for these two terms is content knowledge. My CT does not provide any 'model' answers for the students. It is interactive: CT questions and students answer. It is something like Socratic questioning. In addition, students get involved in engaging personally with the stories. For example, students are tasked to film a video (the scene taken from the text, “Video” by Alfian Sa’at, is assigned by my CT) and they had to do a presentation by analysing the specific scene, as well as justifying their video representation. They also had to reflect on the whole process and how it helped them to make meaning of the text. 

For Sec 2E, they also did group work (group presentation on poem analysis as well as recitation of poem). In short, the approach to teaching Literature in my school is one where teachers play the role of a facilitator and students learn by engaging personally with texts.

Li Ying