Pei Yee's blog post 1

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


I'm currently in St. Margaret's Secondary School. At lower secondary level, English Literature and English Language are combined and taught as the Language Arts Programme (LAP). In this programme, students experience the text through a series of projects where they complete "authentic" tasks such as travel brochures, costume design, creative writing (scripting a chatshow, writing a letter or diary entry from a character's perspective), debates with reference to the text. They are instructed to use PEEL to structure their writing assignments. However, the programme assumes that the students are naturally strong in English so weaker students continue to repeat grammar mistakes which upper secondary English teachers have problems rectifying. In LAP, there is also an emphasis on CME. Students are taught to relate events in the book to various values in life such as loyalty, care, self-respect, honesty etc. LAP takes place over 12 periods every week.

Upper secondary literature is taught exclusively by two or three teachers as there is only one literature class per upper sec level. The girls are quite vocal so the lesson is mostly lively and interactive. From the lesson I’ve observed, the teacher begins the lesson with a line in the text as an entry point for the rest of the lesson. The girls respond and then the teacher gives them a model answer. There is an emphasis on essay writing in the second half of the year for the Secondary 4s – so that they can consolidate their thoughts and work on their essay writing skills. Not sure about Lit at upper sec but I think there are about 5 periods a week..