Literature @ Fairfield Secondary School

Students in Fairfield start learning Literature as a subject only from Secondary 2 onwards so that students are not overwhelmed with too many subjects in Secondary 1. For my practicum, I 've been assigned a Secondary 2 class to teach, as such, I would know more about literature in lower secondary than that in upper secondary. In case you're curious, the Secondary 4 students are reading Tell Tales for their 'O' level text.

In Secondary 2, they begin the year studying about poetry and literary devices. The school prepared a poetry package (2 thick sets of worksheets) which the students have to bring and refer to for Literature lessons. Poems are easy to understand and relate to as those chosen were by Singaporean poets who discuss about life in Singapore. I have been unable to observe a lesson where Literature is taught in the past 3 weeks has Fairfield has been involved in the school organised Poetry Slam Competition, tests and error analysis for examination scripts. In Term 2, the Secondary 2 students will read the play version of To Kill A Mockingbird by Christopher Sergel where I will begin teaching. At the end of Term 2, students will produce a video where they will have to act out some scenes in the play. Students will also be going to watch plays to give them an idea of how plays are put up to aid them in their final project.

Overall, Fairfield follows the Understanding by Design (UbD) framework where having identified the needs of the students and a final deliverable at the end of each term, a scheme of work is produced with a goal in mind. Thereafter, the department will find resources and prepare lessons that will help the students reach the final goal.

Literature at St. Andrew's Secondary School

I observed the Secondary Three Literature class once and taught the next three lessons. The Sec Threes are currently doing prose, along with an introduction to The Chrysalids. As far as I can see with my guys, along with observations of the Secondary Four class, Literature is taught in a very explicit way as the boys have not read the text, and are in need of a lot of hand-holding to help them understand the concepts.

We try to help the class along by using examples and simulations into our lessons, so that the students can relate to the lesson with their current schema. The teacher I observed got the students (and she prepared them) to act out an extract of The Chrysalids and had the students observe the demeanour and behaviour of the actors involved (in accordance to the text), to make the text authentic to the students.

The school has agreed to a more LangLit approach, giving the lower secondary students poetry slam programmes and drama clinics conducted by the graduating drama club boys. The upper secondary boys get to go for a drama class that involves them getting into groups, writing their own scripts, rehearsing and then performing for their peers at the Arts House.

RGS Literature

For the teaching practicum period I’ve been assigned to teach Year 3 pupils in the Raffles Programme (a 6 year integrated programme culminating in the ‘A’ Levels). Currently, we are reading Lordof the Flies by William Golding, a somewhat surprising choice for a girls’ school.
The school as a whole utilizes the ‘Understanding by Design (UbD)’ model for curriculum planning. This model works by going ‘backwards’, by looking first at the outcomes to be achieved before setting assessment goals, designing lessons and selecting appropriate resources. The Lit Schemes of Work (SoW) that I have viewed will also generally link back to larger macro-conceptsthat govern academic disciplines in the Raffles Programme. For the current SoW the macro-concept selected is ‘models’, which means ‘tentative schemes or structures that correspond to real objects, events or classes of events, and that have explanatory power and communicate salient points to others’.

That said, Literature teaching and learning at Raffles Girls’ School (Secondary) is not really vastly different from what I experienced (very briefly) in other schools. Group work and class-based discussions prevail, and factual knowledge of the text is demanded of the students, but not repeatedly harped upon. Instead, focus is placed on thematic concerns and close reading. One innovative (at least to me) methodology that we are moving into, starting next Term, is the use of ‘question generation’ activities to engage the students. This method follows from a fundamental belief that only those who ask the right questions gain knowledge, and thus the focus will shift from teachers’ questioning towards guiding the students to formulate (and evaluate the value of) their own sets of questions about the text. The teachers at the school believe that this will be workable and worthwhile given that the students are of high ability. 

Lit in Peicai Secondary

In Term 1, the Sec 1 students studied plays. They wrote their own scripts in groups and that will be their assessment for CA1. The students also had a chance to role-play their scripts in class. Before the end of the term, we started on setting. Next term, we will be doing unseen prose. The students will learn how to use PEE to answer questions on setting, characterization and plot. In Term 3, students will be doing Roald Dahl's The Witches.

For Sec 2 students, they did Act 1 of Romeo and Juliet. Not quite sure how it was taught. For next term, they will be doing unseen poetry. They will also apply PEE to poetry.

There are no Lit classes for Sec 3 students as the number of interested students is too low to form a class.

The Sec 4s are doing The Good Earth. My CT spent most of the time going through plot with them to prepare them for common test because some students have not finished reading the tested chapters.

How Literature is taught in VJC

VJ is currently teaching Paper 3's "The individual and the society", and I've been following the lectures and tutorials for Othello. The past few weeks were spent on introducing the overall theme, and it was only during this week that the teachers started to teach the text of Othello itself. During the tutorial slots, the tutors will mainly focus on the teaching of key scenes, using dramatization, discussions, and some form of structured worksheets.Currently, they are also adopting Project Zero's visible thinking routines as part of the lessons.

From what I know, there isn't a fixed SOW, but the teachers will have weekly meetings to decide how to go about teaching the text in upcoming terms. Most tutors have different ways of teaching the text, but for the later part of the year, the lessons will be based on a seminar style approach, where the students will take charge of doing research, and doing a presentation on particular aspects of the text.

Lit in St Andrew's Secondary School

I have not had the opportunity to observe that many Literature lessons in St Andrew's, only the ones taught my CTs, Sec 2s who are reading Animal Farm, and Sec 5s who are at the moment revising The Chrysalids. For the Sec 5's revision, there is no standard teaching method; the teacher chooses what to teach and how to teach it depending on the learning gaps identified from the previous lesson. The various revision methods include lectures, essay practice, mind mapping and class discussion. For the Sec 2s, there is a scheme of work that dictates that one chapter and a corresponding theme or literary technique is to be covered every three weeks, but this is not followed. The students in my CT's classes have been treated to a line-by-line approach, but I am aware that teachers in other classes, especially those teaching the lower end classes that do not read their books, have given their students re-enactments, jigsaws and poster decorating activities to complete, to force them “read” the text.

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

At Unity Secondary School, Literature is only offered to the Lower Secondary Students (Secondary 1 and Secondary 2). The Secondary 1 students are not doing Literature this term. Instead, they will only be doing Literature in Term 3 whereby students will read the text “Emily of Emerald Hill”. As for the Secondary 2 students, they are currently studying the text “The Giver” by Lois Lowry. I am assigned to teach Secondary 2 Literature—1 Express class and 1 Normal Academic class. It is a challenge to teach Literature in the school because many of the students have the mentality that they will not do Literature in Upper Secondary. Most of the students are also rather weak in their command of the English Language. In addition, some of the students do not like the subject and find it boring because they hate to read and write. For Literature lessons, the teachers will explain difficult concepts/themes and after which, students would be given worksheets/handouts to do so as to reinforce their learning.  In addition, to increase the students’ participation, students are given a project to complete over the March Holidays where they have to create artifacts based on the novel they are currently studying and they will also need to present their work through an exhibition after the March Holidays (Term 2 Week 2). It is definitely a challenging task to teach Literature to the Secondary 2 Normal Academic students because many of them do not like the subject and because they do not read the text, they face difficulty in understanding the novel.