Blogpost 3: Creative Lesson

My most creative lesson was, undoubtedly, the introduction to the character of Joseph Strorm, the father of the protagonist in The Chrysalids. To get the students to have a feel of the character, I had to do a little acting during the start of the lesson.

I studied the character for a week through his appearances in the first few chapters of the novel, paying attention to his speech (the specifics words he says as well) and mannerisms. I then printed out the class rules (each rule on A3-sized paper) and taped them around the classroom, to make it look similar to the description of the protagonist's home, where rules from The Repentances (the other book that survived the nuclear fallout in The Chrysalids) are put up on every wall of the house.

The students were shocked when I greeted them with a scowl and I proceeded to discipline them about their behaviour, lack of punctuality and attitude. Their flaws did aid in the portrayal, as they genuinely thought I was disciplining them. Talks later with some of the boys revealed that they did find it odd that I used terms that seemed oddly familiar (they were from the book). The boys did say afterwards that they felt oppressed in the classroom, and it felt weird that I was so furious for a good ten minutes ("I thought Sir had lost it"). The ruse ended when I got the boys to "bow their heads and pray for repentance", something which is common in The Chrysalids after any character makes a mistake, and my CT and I started laughing that they actually did so!

The lesson continued with a handout that required them to record how they felt when put in an environment like this, as well as how my character looked, moved, and interacted with others. They then compared their observations with their knowledge of Joseph Strorm, a character who they now had to produce a character sketch of. To aid them in their task, I had two volunteers from the class to act out two key incidents from the book with me to let the boys get a visual feel of what was happening in the novel. Their character sketch and a mindmap they produced afterwards (this was also something that was required of them) did inform me about their understanding of the character and all signs did point to a successful lesson in the end.

Assessment of Literature in St. Andrew's Secondary School

St. Andrew's Secondary School mainly uses summative assessment in grading its students. Two assignments and a test or exam is used to collate the students' CA or SA marks at the end of the term. There are other projects that test their learning as well, such as the Favourtie Poem Project that the Secondary Ones do that to test on their understanding of poetry which they covered in Term 1.

Other interesting programmes available for the students, such as Poetry Slam for the lower secondary and Drama lessons for the upper secondary actually get assessed under their English marks, as part of the LangLit approach for the masses at St. Andrew's so that it benefits everyone, not just the Literature students.

As for the Secondary Three who I teach, they are mainly assessed via the two-assignment, one-common test/exam format, with the teacher being given the freedom to choose their best two assignments to include in their CA marks. Their Drama and Kite Runner project (where they read the text, produce a presentation and scrapbook about it, and make a kite to fly) will begin next term and will be included under their English CA.

Blog Post 3

I had to teach metaphors to Secondary 1 Normal Academic students for one of my lessons. As it was a follow up from a previous lesson on simile, I had to ensure that students do not confuse similes with metaphors. I did a quick assessment by raising examples on powerpoint and asking students to answer if the example was a simile using the given colored paper (green for yes, red for no). These examples included metaphors. For those that were metaphors, I used the opportunity to introduce the concept of metaphors to them. 

After they have grasped the basic concept of metaphors, I used pop music from Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Akon etc to arouse their interest at the same time to better teach them the concept of similes and metaphors. They had to listen to the music and fill up a prepared worksheet and identify the simile/metaphor present and explain what was compared and how they recognized it to be a simile or metaphor. 

It is surprising that they are able to identify the metaphors and similes in the music and categorise them accurately within a short time. They were also able to explain the some of the meaning of the metaphor/similes. They found it enjoyable and were able to learn faster. They also liked the using of paper to “voice out” their answers and not shout out as a class.Of course, they also had visual aids to help them better understand the comparisons of the metaphors/similes.

Blog Post #3: Creative Lesson

My most creative lesson was the introduction to haikus. As the 5-7-5 structure of a haiku is generally quite easy for students (these are Sec 1 NA students) to understand, I did some syllables-identification with the students as a pre-activity, and then moved on to haiku creation.

I got the 40 students into 10 groups, and gave each of them one object which could be found in the classroom, like the windows, or the whiteboard. Each group had to create a haiku that described the object, or its function; but students could not mention the name of the object in their haikus. After they created their haikus, students were given a template to fill in, and the first person to correctly guess all 10 haikus was awarded with a prize.

Students found the activity easy and enjoyable, and I was surprised that every group managed to come up with quite creative haikus. I guess the 5-7-5 structure is not that difficult to follow, and the students really liked that it was a competition.

Blog #3: Creative Lesson

         One interesting lesson I conducted was when I taught the class about the historical and social context (setting) of To Kill A Mockingbird. It required me to research on the history of slavery and important movements like the Civil Rights Movement in order to paint to the class a clearer picture of the time period in the play. I started the lesson with a trivia quiz about the book. Students were tasked to read the book during the March holidays so this was a chance for both teacher and student to assess how much was understood. Thereafter, I introduced the setting of the play and taught about the events and attitudes prevalent during the 1930s such as the segregation laws in the southern states and racism. To aid in teaching, I made a worksheet with the timeline of all the important events that students need to take note of and showed pictures of that period. I also showed a video which depicted the lives of the black slaves to the time when slavery was abolished. Having understood the idea of white slavery, I made the class take on the perspective of a black American in the 1930s and reflect about how they would have felt during that period. This is an application of what Atticus (from the play) would like everyone do: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Students were emotional and angry after the lesson as they could not understand why the blacks were so badly treated which to me, shows that the lesson was successful as they were emotionally involved with what they were learning. 

Blog Post 3

The first part of the lesson was not very interesting because it was a continuation from the previous lesson. The Literature department has come up with a set of rubrics to mark the students’ answers for Lower Secondary. As a result, I went through the rubrics with the students sitting in their groups, and asked them to assess another group’s answer on Characterisation that they have done the previous week. This is to help them to be aware of the marking scheme so they will know how they are graded.

After that I gave them a worksheet and asked them to predict what ‘Alma’ is about before showing them the short film. I paused when Alma stretched her hand towards the doll and asked the students to predict the ending. Then I showed them the ending. Many of them were able to predict accurately. The students were engaged and they enjoyed the short film. I asked them how they were able to guess the ending and introduced foreshadowing to them. I went through a few PowerPoint slides to explain to them the meaning of foreshadowing, and related it back to “The Monkey’s Paw”.

QCR523 3rd Blog Post

I’m going to admit too that I have not been really creative for my classes, partly due to the lack of time and having to squeeze so many poems in a span of a couple of weeks. For my class, one relatively creative lesson that I have conducted with the Secondary Two students is for the poem "Daffodils" by Wordsworth.

For the class, I was focusing on mood and very briefly, tone of poem. So I basically played two videos of the poem. One video was this rap version of the poem with a mascot squirrel dancing and rapping energetically. The second video is of the same poem, but with a more mellow and relaxing mood to it. After each video, I asked students on their feelings from listening and viewing these videos. Then I got the students to decide which they liked better and which they think is more suitable for the poem.

Following that, I basically explained to the students that in both instances, what influences the students in their perceptions are probably the music and images. However, since normally there will be no accompanying music when we read poetry, the focus here will lie on the images. Through the process of reading, they could visualize the images in the poem.

I got students to list down what are the images that they can see from the poem. As some students are more visual, students can draw as well what are the images that they can see. Students are to quickly do this within 5 minutes. After that I got some students to share on their lines/drawings. They are to also share of their thinking processes in deciding/drawing the images and how this impacted the overall mood of the poem at that point. Finally, I got the students to look at the last two lines, and asked the students what kind of feeling they think the poet is experiencing and how this relates to the overall mood of the poem.