Literature in St. Patrick's School

I am currently given Secondary 1-3 Express Literature at St. Patrick's School. In total, I have 6 classes of Literature to focus on during my Teaching Practice. 

In St. Patrick's School, the secondary 1 students were exposed to drama in the 1st term. The school brought in external drama vendors to teach the boys about stage play and techniques to make a play more interesting. The drama vendors did something very similar to our drama workshop - we made use of a certain object to portray other uses of it. For example, using a piece of cardboard as a handphone. It was generally very appealing to the boys because they got to express their ideas outside of the classroom. For the secondary 2 students, they were engaged in poetry. Their teachers have taught them the O-E-E or P-E-E method (point/observation-evidence-explanation/elaboration) to write a practical criticism piece. For the secondary 3, they also did poetry criticism in term 1, and they would be moving on to reading Telltale:11 Stories in term 2. 

Generally, St. Patrick's School does not have enough Literature teachers to cope with the cohort. They even used the AED educators to teach Literature to the lower secondary students. I'm hoping for a positive change to the area of interest because the boys are generally not interested in the field of Literature.


** I forgot to mention that there is a sizable amount of boys I need to "take care":
secondary 3: 82 boys
secondary 2: 80 boys
secondary 1: 40 boys

for English, it's another class of 39 boys.

can you imagine the number of boys i need to remember?

Assessment of Literature in Chung Cheng High (Main) School

There appears to be more emphasis on a summative approach to assessment rather than a formative one. For the lessons that I've seen so far (and the ones that I've conducted following a weekly plan given by the committee), there is usually a summative assessment on a particular area once it has been taught. For example, the students have been through lessons on essay writing before I joined the school and had a passage-based essay as part of their CA. They will be having lessons on an Unseen text soon (prose) and will have another component of their CA based on that before their mid year examinations. Their recent performance of a Sketch for The Outsiders will also be graded based on two areas: the actual performance itself (expressiveness, accurate depiction of characters, cooperation between group members etc.) and a written Group Reflection piece on the decisions they made for the sketch (why they chose a particular theme, what they were trying to convey to the audience etc.). However, most of the students did not quite understand the requirements for the Group Reflection and ended up writing their own personal feelings about it instead of the stated requirements. This sketch is also part of their continual assessement. In the event that the students have a valid reason for missing/being absent on the day of the test/assessment day, the weightage for the other components will be increased to make up for the one that was missed.

I am not so sure about the Secondary Ones but as stated earlier in my previous post, the Secondary Threes do have some kind of formative assessment. The teacher in charge mentioned that students' participation in additional activities and written work (taking part in school plays, journal entries) are also taken into account on top of the official modes of assessment in the school.

Assessment of Literature at Coral Secondary School

Formative assessment is conducted through completing homework assignments, worksheets, some group work (but not in every class). However, with the limited amount of time with them (2 hrs 15 min every two weeks), and the constant struggle to get students to submit their homework, formative assessment is not viewed as an ideal means of assessment. On a side note, I'm still trying to get students to even read their texts, and my lesson activities have to be based on getting them to read it in class so that they understand what I'm trying to teach. Formative assessment is a challenge, unless it assesses if students have read the text.

Summative assessment is still the primary means by which the school assesses students. I've observed that the varied teaching across classes has also led to varied instructions regarding tests. Different teachers expect different standards and responses for the test in their classes. As I was marking the test scripts for a Normal Academic class, I was asked to be more lenient; since most of them would not be taking Lit in upper secondary, it would be easier to just try to pass them. The mid-year exams will cover plot, character, themes based on Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.

Assessment of Literature at Dunearn

For Secondary 2 students, there is a mixture of both formative and summative assessment. For this term, as we are doing drama, the students have to write 1-2 class tests (using the PEE structure) as well as having to act out a scene in the play (and they will be assessed for their tone, acting, language and expression). In term 1, they had to do 2 in-class tests as well as a poetry project where they have to analyse a chosen poem and present it to the class.

For Secondary 3 students, they have formative assessment such as group projects (example: the video project i mentioned in my previous entry) as well as essay assignment (homework) and in-class test. The formative assessments count towards their CA grade. There is a general shift from a mixture of both formative summative to a more focused exam preparation kind of assessment (more essays than projects) so as to prepare them for O level examinations eventually. 

How Nan Hua assesses Literature

The assessment of Secondary 2 Literature is a combination of formative and summative methods. Students will have at least 1 class test per term which requires them to write a combination of short essay-style answers and comprehension questions, and terms 2 and 3 will have students embarking on a research project and a performance project. Term 4 will focus more on essay-writing, to help students better gauge their ability to take Literature in Upper Secondary.
Secondary 3 students do not have official formative assessment, as the focus is on preparing them for the 'O' Level examinations. However, teachers have a lot of autonomy to implement formative assessments within their own classes, be it for class participation or diligence in doing and submitting work. These formative assessments will count towards students' CA grade. Tests and examinations are 'O' Level-style essay questions. In Term 1, students attempt the unseen component. The mid-year examination in Term 2 simulates an actual 'O' Level setting for students, with Unseen and set text (prose) being tested. Term 3 will see the students starting on their other set text (drama), and the end of year examination will be on all three components (unseen, set prose, set drama).

literature in SKSS

Unfortunately, there is no upper secondary literature offered in Seng Kang Secondary School, so I have to be contented with teaching literature to a class of Secondary Two students for now. From what I understand students are exposed to simple poetry and prose in Secondary One and taught basic literary devices such as personification and simile, which they revisit again at greater depth and breadth in Secondary Two. In Secondary Two they are taught basic skills on how to analyse an unseen poem, and assessed based on these skills: the format of the test is structured in a way that is more like comprehension, where there is a series of questions based on an unseen poem and students have to give short answers. However, it does differ from comprehension in that the questions asked are more specifically related to literature, for instance a student might be asked to identify a device used and explain what it shows about the theme etc. There is also a set text for Secondary Two students, which I will begin teaching immediately after the March holidays, and this year the school is intending to introduce "The Boy in Striped Pyjamas" for the first time. On one hand, this means that there aren't many resources available as yet for teachers to utilise; on the other hand, however, it also implies that there will be more flexibility in terms of how the text is to be taught, which is a good thing. Unlike for English, where there is a scheme of work outlining what skills are to be taught every single week, for literature it seems like there is more freedom, and while there are set texts to be taught and certain timeframes within which to finish teaching these texts, everything else seems to be more or less up to the teacher to decide.

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.