QCR523 1st Post: Literature taught at SCGS.

SCGS offers the Language Arts programme to the lower secondary students and Full Literature / Elective Literature to the upper secondary students (Literature is compulsory at my school, so everyone takes Literature). I was assigned to join the lower secondary Language Arts team in my school's ELL department (for CS1: Literature) and I am currently teaching Secondary 1 LA. I have observed that LA is taught in a highly integrated manner. My department has developed a syllabus for the Sec 1s, split into 4 'modules'--1 for each term of the academic year--to designate a specific skill(s) and topical focus for each term. Term 1 (module 1) tries to bridge the gap between primary education and secondary syllabus with a module that goes easy on the students.

"Module 1: Moving Up; from Child to Teen" gets students to identify text types for different purposes, recognise formal register and tone, and practice different writing techniques to telling a story based on a collection of short excerpts. The lessons will guide students in descriptive writing tasks like narrative writing and a graded personal recount essay. Practices during lessons include informal comprehension tests that assessed students' ability to comprehend the writers' writing techniques and the intended effect/impact (this is a more Lit-based approach to setting comprehension exercises).

"Module 2: Hello, World! Subthemes: Nature, Culture & Family)" contained a selection of poetry and excerpts from novels/short stories. The aim is to get students to identify themes, develop personal response(s) to texts, explain/express what makes the texts interesting or effective in delivering their messages/central ideas. There is a comprehension test and a full-length narrative essay (Commonwealth essay) in the assessment component of this module. Classroom work involved the students in practicing the P.E.E paragraph format for writing a literary response to a text.

Because the term is affected by tournaments and the interruption of curriculum by the Outdoor Education Week (27 Feb - 2 Mar), the next part of the module, which focuses on character analysis, narrative skills (story plotting and narrative techniques), and evaluation of narrative technique, will continue after the March holidays. The assessment component includes a structured poetry test and a poetry writing portfolio to pick up from the previous focus on poem analysis. The lessons itself would prepare the students for full-fledged novel analysis in the remaining half of Term 2 and for a more 'practical criticism' reading of a literary text in Terms 3 and 4, where they will read Kira-Kira and Emily of Emerald Hill respectively.

On the whole, just by looking at the Scheme of Work for the entire year, I think the department tries hard to develop a rigorous syllabus that packs a lot of (Literature) foundation skills in a year's lessons in a progressive manner (spiral progression). Using the Understanding by Design (UbD) model, the department plans the Scheme of Work with specific goals (graded assignments/assessment and ungraded practice) in mind. It allows for a greater overlapping of EL skills and Literature skills in the teachers' development of the material (module packages 1-4). Appreciating literary techniques and devices also enhances students' writing abilities as they are taught to be consciously aware of these techniques in the text types they read for LA. I like how EL and Literature are mutually supportive in this LA programme. I am also very pleased that teachers are allowed to develop their own materials to supplement the module packages in their own lessons to suit their teaching needs (dependent on class profile etc) and styles.