Creative Lesson Plan (Sec 3 Unseen)

The poem for this lesson is Carol Ann Duffy's "Valentine", which made use of the onion as an extended metaphor to illustrate the idea of love. My students are generally weak at analyzing ideas, and this lesson was designed to sharpen their sensitivity and analytical skills.

To cater to students' short attention spans and preference for watching films and drama rather than read text on paper, I decided to do a dramatisation of the poem. I got a boy to volunteer to be my "valentine" for the day in exchange for a pack of M&Ms, and got out an onion, which I had prepared and cut before the lesson, to use as a prop.

I told the class to observe my actions and the specific lines at which I made those actions, and started my dramatization. For the first time for all my lessons so far, the entire class was quiet and eagerly looking at me. A few students even took out their iPhones to videotape the show.

After I had done with my acting (and got applause from them), I asked the class to recall my actions and link them to specific lines in the poem. I prompted them to verbalise the significance of my actions and hence analyse the progression of the extended metaphor. Many of the students were able to give accurate answers on what the onion represented, and it was a very encouraging lesson for both my students and me.

I later got them to apply their knowledge of the extended metaphor to Lee Tzu Pheng's "Singapore River" and write an essay paragraph as homework. When I collected their homework from them during the next lesson, many of them told me that Singapore River was easy, and that they would like to have more "easy" poems like it for their examinations. This to me is an affirmation, for "Valentine" was a poem which they struggled with for their Common Test, and to me this was a clear transition from being unable to identify extended metaphors to finding the task simple and straightforward.