Describe
briefly the literature and assessment culture in your Practicum school. What
did you learn during Practicum?
1.
Read Shepard, L. A. (2000) The role of
assessment in a learning culture. Educational
Researcher 29(7): 4-14.*
2.
Earl, L. (2005) Thinking about purpose in classroom assessment.
ACSA.
Taught sec 1 NA Totto-chan which was incredibly difficult to do. Classroom management aside, I had 2 single period lessons with them a week and had to finish the whole of Totto-chan in 7 hours after I factored in all the lessons I would lose from youth day and national day. I was a very unorthodox sec 1 na lit teacher in that I gave them short answer questions that dealt with theme, character etc. and scaffolded them to the point where they were writing lit essays using the PEE method. All their worksheets contributed to their final CA grade. I absolutely refused to get them to do bookmarks and 'fun things' to help them love lit more simply because these projects are only very vaguely related to lit. Instead I got them to think about how they can use experiences in their own lives to help them relate to the text which they enjoyed. The one fun thing we did clearly tied in with the text. I asked them to write a letter from the point of view of a grown up Totto-chan to Kobayashi reminiscing about her time in the school. While they had the freedom to decorate their letters etc. they also had to make sure they used material from the text and reflect on the values and morals taught.
ReplyDeleteMy Sec 3s were a motley crew. This was a tail-end express class where most of the students were doing lit because they could not do a maths. The main problem I encountered was that while they enjoyed the fun lessons with the videos and the hot seating etc. they did not like doing written work like essays. Getting them to hand up their CA lit essay was like pulling teeth... I had to call quite a few parents. What I tried to do was introduce a creative work which required them to write and analyze while giving them some free reign to use their creativity. I created the 'Waknuk Herald' which was to be 25% of their final grade (I was teaching the Chrysalids). They had to pretend to be reporters in the employ of the Inspector reporting on a fictitious blasphemy who was pretending to live as a norm in order to escape banishment. The students really appreciated this project and many of them put a lot of love and care into not only the presentation of the newspaper, but the content as well. Doing projects like these engaged the students while getting them to practise skills like structuring and organizing their article, presenting a point of view and doing character analysis which are all part of the exam skill set.
I was at Zhonghua Secondary School, and literature was taught in a modular fashion at the lower secondary level. I taught at the secondary two level. In the first half of the year, the students covered short stories. In term 3, I taught S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders. There were 5 periods per week, each period being 30 minutes long. There were 2 double periods and 1 single period. This text had been taught at ZHSS for the past decade or so, and the amount of resources available for teaching were abundant.
ReplyDeleteThe teaching of literature at the secondary two level was to be in a very interactive way, as instructed by my CT, that it has been the norm the way the text has been taught, for the simple reason to attract and lure students to take up literature at the upper secondary level. As a result, half of my lessons were role-playing sessions, where the students dramatised key scenes in the text. While their interest was sustained, it also helped in allowing the students to place themselves in the shoes of the characters. The rest of the lessons were taught via frontal lecture and powerpoint slides.
In terms of assessment, it was mainly via a common test and written assignments. The students either worked on passage-based questions or essay questions.
Literature Culture:
ReplyDeleteMy Practicum school only offered Literature at lower Secondary levels. I was tasked to teach a few Secondary two classes for Literature. They studied The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas. Teachers used the text to model close reading and textual analysis, teach literary devices and their effects as well as encourage personal response and raise awareness of the historical context. As Literature is not offered as an O' level subject in the school, the EL department takes the Lang-Lit approach when planning the Literature coursework such that the knowledge and language skills acquired from Literature lessons are 'transferable' to English. As my Practicum school is quite a ‘heartland’ school, students generally do not read widely, if not at all. Thus, they have very little world knowledge. It was quite a challenge to get them to engage personally with the text or even make sense of the story beyond Bruno’s perspective (third person-limited). I remember having to spend a few lessons showing them holocaust videos to make them realize that the historical context of the novel is not simply a boring part of history that but a ‘colossal, universal degradation in which all humanity shares’ (David S. Wyman, 2009). After that, I gave students a creative expression task where they were supposed to express their sentiments about the holocaust in any form that they like, for e.g., in a song, drawing, rap, etc. It was heartening to see the change in the students’ attitudes and perspective of the Holocaust. Through this experience, I learnt that contextualization is a essential aspect of the literature teaching in my practicum school.
Assessment Culture:
I observed that my CT always explains to the class how marking is done and shows them the assessment criterion before returning students their test scripts. Firstly, she will grade their essays by band and secondly, moderating marks within band. Being transparent about the process of marking helps students see that the assessment is a fair representation of their ability at a particular point. By letting students know which band they fall into, it also helps them to see the general areas for improvement based on the assessment criterion and rubrics. I also observed that my CT uses Socratic questioning to help students sort out their rationale for making certain claims in their essays. This helps to guide students to analyze their thought processes.
My CT also advised me to read through the students’ essays and we sat down to discuss about the lapses in learning observed from their answers. We reflected on our teaching pedagogy and lessons and sought to address the issues we identified by planning lessons to bridge the learning gaps observed. Through this experience, I realized that the value of formative and summative assessment is not only in providing feedback to the students about how much they have learnt, but also in informing teachers about the effectiveness of their lessons and potential areas for improvement.
I taught Sec 2 Lit in a mid-high ability school. It is an essential year because students get to choose if they want to do Pure Literature for 'O' levels, and majority of the students would rather opt for science streams.
ReplyDeleteMy CT told me to plan my lessons and assignments with the final assessment in mind, which was their end of year examinations. The students were going to be tested on unseen prose and poetry, on top of the set text which they had already covered in the earlier terms.
While this makes total sense, ensuring that we as teachers focus in what we teach, I also disagree to a certain extent. Most of my students are only concerned about their grades, and will do anything to regurgitate a "model essay". Yes, we as teachers had to provide answer schemes and model answers to essay questions. Nothing wrong with that, but i felt it did not suit the demographics of the students. Furthermore, the students did not enjoy their set text (Twelfth Night), and when it came to unseen prose/poetry, they had nothing to study or notes to fall back on. Another issue altogether...
So, because assessment is such an integral part of the school culture, all students are concerned with is their grades, and not truly enjoying the text or appreciating Literature. And I don't want my students to be like that. Yes, the PEEL structure is helpful in structuring their essays, but it seems to be stifling students' interest in writing and learning at times (and somewhat hindering creative expression). I guess I'm unhappy because of the inflexibility that the end year examinations bring, and at the end of the day, I really don't know what students bring out of their literature lessons besides learning how to score well for their end of year examinations.
I know this sounds pretty pessimistic but if anything, I would like my students to enjoy learning and reading beautiful and complexly crafted texts. This is why students will then decide to take Pure Literature in their upper secondary years, and not be put off by Literature and essay writing.
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ReplyDeleteIn Hai Sing, they didn't have a Pure Lit upper sec class so I was given a sec 1 lit class who have covered poetry and drama-abridged-into-short-stories (which they hated) in the first half of the year, and are now reading a novel "Private Peaceful". First introduced by the level head, who was on prolonged leave while I was there, there wasn't a SOW or any resources to speak of. Good. Creating essential questions for this "unit" was the first thing I did and it really helped in envisioning what "to cover" as a whole, while working on the book and teaching the students the book in parts: character, plot, themes etc.
ReplyDeleteI created a blog for my students: http://peacefulcharity.blogspot.sg/ on which I posted the students' work and reflected on my lessons with them... all of them visited it but none of them commented on it. Being Sec 1, I suppose, and unfamiliar with blogging etc. they weren't sure what to make of it. They were not familiar with working collaboratively for lit lessons. They were more used to teacher-talk lessons with the teacher leading the discussions, telling them what's important, rather than 'creating' their own understanding of the book. So, out came journal writing, poster making, video critiquing, roleplaying, PEELing... but there was one thing I wished I had the courage to change but didn't i.e. paper assessments. In 10 weeks, the students had 3 paper tests! However, seeing the same trend in my upper sec English classes, which have English tests almost every week, omg, I wasn't sure if I should step in. I made suggestions to the HOD before I left, but you know, well...
All in all, assessments were mostly passage based with questions directed at assessing the students' understanding of the novel in terms of plot, character, message, theme and all the essential stuff, but not much at developing the students' ability to create something out of it... though I'm not sure it's something that the O levels are focusing on either.
The current batch of Secondary 4 at Greendale Secondary will be the last to study Literature at O Levels. An informal discussion with the Principal (in my first week of practicum) confirmed that he had no intention of reviving/ introducing Literature for Greendale students. He cited reasons such as poor PSLE English scores and poor track record. To him, purpose is indeed everything. In his effort to fulfil "accountability demands" and certify students for entry into other educational programs and institutions", he phased out Literature (even at lower secondary) and in its place was a Music-Literature program (only offered for half of the year to lower secondary students only). The end-product of the course: a 6-8 minute music skit. Literary elements taught in this program (though, very diluted versions) included characterisation, plot and figurative language (to help students write the lyrics to the songs in their skit). It was very challenging for me to be observed teaching Literature because I had to 'create' a Literature lesson out of the Music-Literature confusion course.
ReplyDeleteAnd so, I had little opportunity to assess students (in the traditional sense) on how much they have learnt from my lessons. Most of my assessments were informal (teacher observations, student demonstrations, collections of students' work and students' self and peer evaluations). I felt that I did try to "connect assessment to ongoing instruction". I introduced a classroom routine in which there were assigned roles for each group member (and in each week, these roles would change). These roles were made explicitly known (one who comments, one who gives feedback, one who evaluates, etc). An evaluator had to evaluate all group members and himself. It seems (in theory, at least), classroom routines and corresponding assessments reflected the students’ learning (and my teaching) objectives (because I made my expectations very visible, transparent even to students). However, in reality, because the students knew that the Music-Literature program was a once-a-week lesson that was non-examinable, they cared little about the course. Hence, little thought was being put into the self and peer assessment.
As much as a Dewian advocate as I was (at the start of practicum), my teaching philosophy has now changed somewhat (to one that is more pragmatic?). While I do try to incorporate students' home-culture into the school-culture (eg, I conducted a needs-analysis on the types of songs, etc. students like before I chose which songs to include in their ‘similes and metaphors’ lesson), I think that Shepard's social-constructivist view of classroom assessment is an idealization. Unless policy-makers change the role of assessment, its role will be largely utilitarian. But really, is it so bad that its role remains this way?
In the tenth week of my practicum, I visited my VP and asked her to consider reinstating Literature (at least at the lower secondary level) citing the new O Level syllabus and the Ministry’s new focus on students’ character development as reasons. And guess what? The management is considering the proposal. In the end, it was the need to satisfy the “demands of an external authority” that helped create a learning (Literature) culture!
Hi all, i spent 10 weeks at Anglican High School and it was an eye-opening experience when it came to teaching Literature.
ReplyDeleteLiterature Culture:
Prior to my arrival at the school, the secondary two express pupils were not doing Literature yet as they had D&T as well as Home Economics and Art to occupy their time. Literature was left to term 3 which meant that their prior experience with Literature was in Secondary 1. They only did some poems and short stories. The school chose to deviate from the usual text/prose/poem that most schools engage in and decided to expose the students to drama/theatre. I was heartened to see that the literature department was willing to go out of the norm and pages of the syllabus booklet. I taught students a series of lessons on voice projection, speech on stage, creating drama scripts and supervised numerous reading rehearsals. These were things i was never taught when i was in secondary school. I was provided with the basic materials and had to add on and create new resources, whichever way i would like to. Althought the literature culture among the teaching staff was good, most students took Literature as only one of those subjects you can score in to bring up your overall score. Literature was a means to an end: Get into triple science class. Their problem with Literature at O Levels is that, there are far too many books to read and even more essays to write.
Assessment Culture:
The lower secondary students were exposed to the typical pen and paper assessment as well as the drama component. The drama component in my opinion is extremely helpful for students as most of the work was done collaboratively and they were made to think out of the box. Students wrote their own stories, made their own props, costumes and directed their own drama. They were assessed for group work, creativity, originality of script and excellence in performance which are in my opinion, soft skills that will help develop confident individuals. Although this is the case, students were intelligent and they know what awaits them at O Levels where grades were synonymous with good essays which also meant alot of reading as well as drill and practice. I must say that the Literature culture is very much affected by how students are accessed, if the Ministry wants to develop creativity, make sure the assessment criterias encourage that.
I taught 3 secondary 2 express classes with very different student profiles. Topics covered during the 10 weeks ranged from teaching them the structure of discussion and argumentative essay type answers, to unseen prose and going over the short story ‘Cora Unashamed’. In the very first week I realised that a lot of emphasis was laid on somehow tying the literature lessons closely with what was going on in the English language lessons. Therefore, the emphasis was predominantly on learning how to write discussion and argumentative type answers while comparing them with discussion and argumentative type essays.
ReplyDeleteHowever, while teaching them unseen prose I got a lot of liberty to do things the way I wanted to, the lessons were more engaging with videos and lots of hot-seating activities. Before getting them to write any essay type answer I gave out worksheets with scaffolding questions where they could create mind-maps to help them plan the essay type answer. The students were quite good at understanding perspectives and the work they submitted was not only well written but amazed me with the kind of thinking they put behind it. They did not merely regurgitate what I told them in class but thought through their answers and presented different angles to the same question.
My most engaging lesson was one in which I taught them the development of tension in the unseen prose passage. I used two videos that the students had to compare and find out the elements of tension. The lesson later focused on the techniques that the author uses to create tension. The students had to write their own stories using all the techniques.
For the discussion and argumentative type answer, I taught the answer by conducting various puzzle activities where the students were provided with the cut outs of the structure of the essay type answers and were required to paste the cut outs in the right order on a mah-jong paper. However, my greatest challenge was to sustain their interest in this topic.
When teaching the short story I did close reading of the first few passages which worked very well and then conducted a quiz which was graded, to ensure that everyone reads the entire text. I also used the movie ‘Cora Unashamed’ (which I showed all my 3 classes) to stimulate their interest towards the story, after which they picked out elements in the movie that were different from the text. In this way I also managed to touch upon how a particular piece of literature is varied to suit different mediums.
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ReplyDeleteI was posted to St. Andrew’s Secondary School (SASS) for my practicum and before reporting there, I decided to check with some of my Army mates who were former students of SASS to find out more about the school culture and their perception of Literature as a subject. What I uncovered from the discourse is that literature is actively being promoted by the lower secondary teachers to their respective classes. In fact, SASS has been offering literature as an optional subject to their Normal Academic (NA) and Normal Technical (NT) students since the early nineteen nineties right up to today’s context.
ReplyDeleteThe two classes that were placed under my charge happened to be a Secondary One NA class and a Secondary Three Express pure lit class. The main focus of the lower secondary boys dealt with the exploration of short prose texts and they too, were taught to employ the PEEL method when constructing their responses to open-ended questions that relate to poignant themes like language, plot, characterisation, etc. Although, I initially felt the same way as Pris (in that the PEEL structure limits students from creatively expressing themselves in writing), I found out later that young writers actually thrive better when they are presented with a skeletal framework to anchor their ideas to.
Unlike Priya’s case (where her pupils seem to loathe the idea of writing essays), my pure literature students function like ‘Essay Churning Machines’ and most of them are extremely familiar with the PEEL technique since it has been ingrained into them from Sec 1. Hence, I took the opportunity to explore the fun and interesting aspects of literature with the boys as some of them have lost the fervour for the subject, since my CT has been drilling them on essay writing skills for the past few months. One of the things that my boys enjoyed doing was the creation of their very own emblems. I first attempted to scaffold the task for them, by drawing various symbolic representations on the whiteboard and then getting random pupils to tell me what quality/notion each illustration symbolises. As the class began to comprehend the intrinsic associations between an image and its signified meaning, I then provided explicit instructions for the boys to embark on their task. They are also required to produce a short write-up on what each graphic represent. Apart from this mode of assessment, I also graded my students based on their individual PowerPoint presentation of famous literary poets/playwright/authors and collaboratively act out key scenes from John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids.
I did my practicum at Nan Hua High School; took two secondary three classes for literature. NHHS teaches the subject in a modular fashion - with set text being taught by one teacher and the unseen component, by another. I was given the opportunity to teach both, in two different classes. I later learned that these were the only two classes out of 12 doing literature, and though the cohort was small, it was heartening to see that the students were at least interested in it.
ReplyDeleteOne of my most memorable experiences was teaching the unseen component. Prior to being given the class, I was told that I could use any text I wanted, and that the goal was to make the unseen component approachable to the students as most were daunted by the unpredictability of the nature of this portion of the literature paper.
Given free reign in those classes, I was able to engage students by constantly emphasising that the unseen required the skills which I would be teaching, and that it was all down to how well they articulate their impressions of the given text. I got the students to role-play, use drama, use instagram and twitter in class, and throughout all this my CT was highly encouraging of the methods I chose, and it was clear to see that the school supported the literary culture no matter how small the cohort was. I felt that making literature fun and approachable was key to the promotion of this subject, perhaps even more so than just selling it based on relevance.
I taught secondary one Language Arts during my 10 weeks Practicum. Teaching Language Arts in my school was unlike teaching Literature in my contract school. For practicum, I was given an SOW which indicated that I should cover Comprehension, Editing, Narrative/Expository writing with my kids, in addition to the themes of the text (Boy in the Striped PJ & The Gold Cadillac). It basically meant that I had to plan my time carefully in order to squeeze everything. As much as I enjoyed the task of crafting fun worksheets and sourcing interesting materials for my preamble activities, it was really tough to get them to write. I provided model paragraphs for my students, and tried to scaffold their writing, sometimes even to the point of giving helping phrases. I also realized that since I was dealing with a Sports Class, I had to make pedagogical shifts in order to sustain their interest and attention. I delivered lessons that incorporate historical video clips (pertaining to Holocaust/Racial riots in America) and discussions of racial segregation and differences. I also got them to engage in role play during the first few lessons. I realized, however, sometime after my 5th week that I had to stick to frontal teaching when students started to openly show misbehavior and defiance in my class. I had a couple of boys who were constantly disruptive, and getting the class to do group discussions only meant that the noise level was high. It was insane. But I also learn that students enjoy discussing the text when they are given the opportunity to share how the themes and issues are relevant to their everyday life. For instance, I got them to think about how they have been treating their maids/foreign friends as we discussed on whether it was right of Bruno’s father to treat Schmuel harshly just because he was a jew.
ReplyDeleteLiterature Assessment:
We had a level coordinator for Language Arts who provided us with worksheets for students: literary response qns and short quizzes.. together with essays, listening compre, editing etc the scores of these assignments are combined to make up students’ Continual Assessment.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIn Orchid Park Secondary School, I was given two Sec 2 classes and 1 sec 3, which was an elective group, comprised pupils who were forced to take Literature mostly for not qualifying to take maths.
ReplyDeleteI had only one 35 mins period with the sec 2s per week which was too short to cover anything broad or beyond their curriculum whatsoever.This was because the double period lesson every week was reserved for their drama vendor who trained the kids to prepare for the end-of-term assessment performing on Shakespeare's plays (the last scene in "Romeo and Juliet" ; an extract from "A midsummer Night's dream")The subject teachers were only present in the class to monitor their progress while the vendor took over substantially.
So, the sec 2s wouldn't have a formal written test or exam by the end of the term but have to rather present their plays to the vendors and subject teacher who'd grade the individuals based on their roles and contribution.
Each had to take up a duty.For instance, there would be one director, two boys in charge of the music , two pupils as stage managers so on and so forth till the whole class has something to do.
I could tell the students enjoyed themselves thoroughly while we, teachers, would be happier that it was meaningful at the same time. For the students in charge of props and clothes, they had to first study up on the Elizabethan age to create similar designs. This definitely meant a practice of self-directed learning.Hence however insufficient time I got with them to teach Merchant of Venice ( which was their text) I wasn't much disappointed because they picked up something useful during their drama workshops though I'd want to add they did have weekly tests every alternative week on Merchant of Venice which they only rarely did well.
They were enthusiastic enough to stay back after school for their drama though regardless of discouraging scores.
I had to teach Romeo and Juliet to the Sec3s - a class generally not motivated to study Lit however well-disciplined. Hence I managed to do a lot of activities with them some of which I adapted from a Romeo and Juliet workshop they had attended. It was conducted by an English lady from UK.During my tenure I also accompanied them to another seminar on the same text in a school where I chanced upon one of our Lit tutors from NIE as well.
With the sec3s I did hot-seating,peer-teaching,quizzes,tableaux,charades,etc,etc. Towards the latter half of the term, when they were well-acquainted with my style of teaching and I was, to their style of learning, I'd prepare quiz-sheets for them daily to be done within the first 15mins of my class. It used to be a short quiz-sheet with mostly who-said-to-whom, literary device question-types and what certain archaic words meant. They scored pretty okay but enjoyed to solve it. They got so used to it they'd come down to my staff-room every other day to ask more of such quiz-sheets.I could tell they benefited from it because they started READING their texts at least.
My take-away from this class was to manage to have injected some amount of motivation to this bunch of Sec 3s.
What I felt and saw was a deliberate attempt on the school's part to give utmost exposure and opportunities to the kids to learn and like Literature while also pushing them to take initiative to pick things on their own.
I taught Secondary 2 Literature during my practicum. My school places great emphasis on English and English Literature and students are generally interested in the subject. I taught a collection of short stories to what was considered the two best classes in the level. In the first semester, the students studied "The Merchant of Venice". There was an SOW which delineated the learning goals/ themes to be highlighted for each text, but the means of achieving is entirely up to individual teachers/ learning needs of each class. As such, I was able to try more the interesting approaches that we learnt with the classes was taking and the students responded well, which was heartening.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of literature assessment, the only things counted towards their CA were a few fact quizzes and a timed passage-based question. However, during department meetings, there has been talk of (officially) moving towards assessment for learning and crafting assessment which is in line with level-based learning objectives, rather than a one-size-fits-all rubric which is currently used to assess students' work.
I taught Secondary 1 Lit and Secondary 3 Pure Lit during my practicum. The Sec 1 classes comprised of 40 students while the Sec 3 class comprised of only 9 students (yes, quite a small number but it was definitely challenging to engage every one of them).
ReplyDeleteFor Secondary 1 Lit, the school was covering Unseen Poetry and the poems were pre-selected by the SH based on various Thematic domains. Literary skills and appreciations are implicitly taught (although not specifically dictated for each lesson). The SOW only states the poem to be used for the class and teachers have free reign to approach it in whichever way they seem fit for the class after a quick sharing of interpretations during teacher-sharing (to ensure similar threads of analysis & understanding). Fortunately for me, the SH was also my CT and she allowed me to explore various teaching and learning methods for the Sec 1 students. I was also allowed to introduce pairing poems (quite obviously--singaporean poems) for the pre-selected poems based on thematic similarities. I felt this was necessary to give an exposure of the global-local spectrum and also to bring literature "closer to home". The formal assessment at the end of the term was just a 30-min written examination of a taught poem. However, the students were given short written homework (of about 100 words) as formative assessment after each lesson to reflect/respond to the various themes and issues from the poems being discussed in class.
For the Secondary 3 class of 9 students, we were covering The Crucible by Miller. Although the class size is very small, I had the most challenging time ensuring that I have engaged each individual student. The students voluntarily opted to take the subject and that aided much in the teaching and learning. However, the disparity in abilities was quite great within the small class. The lessons conducted were student-centered in which they have to prepare materials for the class discussions and group work. In most of the lessons, I was merely a facilitator in guiding the discussions ensuring that they managed to address the essential question/s that I have presented to them. Similar to the Sec 1, the formal assessment for the term was just a 60-min written examination of a passage from the text. Therefore, in preparation for that, I set up a class blog for them as formative assessments/assignments where they have to respond to a question posted for that particular lesson. I also managed to employ differentiated homework for the class by allocating different questions for different ability students.
I was posted to Fairfield Methodist Secondary School for Practicum and was assigned to teach the top class of the secondary two level Minfong Ho’s, The Clay Marble, for 7 periods (3 hours) each week, by the end of the term. Earlier in the year, the students were exposed to unseen prose and poetry (mostly local) in Term 1, and a play – To Kill a Mocking Bird (abridged play version) in Term 2. So, that covers the genres of play, novel and poetry.
ReplyDeleteLiterature culture:
When I first met up with my CT, she told me that the sec2 literature committee’s main goal is to make Literature as fun as possible to encourage more students to take literature at the upper secondary level. Hence, the unconventional projects of doing a photo essay based on a specific scene from the novel. I couldn’t have been more grateful for that because it gave me room to experiment and approach lessons differently i.e. hotseating, plenty of role-playing and group work amongst other activities. However, getting students to understand literary techniques and exposing them to a new way of processing language and words was a bit of a challenge as they did not do literature in sec 1. Yes, Literature is somehow not offered as a subject in sec 1. As such, the teachers had to really scaffold the lessons and start off with extremely primary literary techniques to help them mine for more meaning and appreciate the texts a better.
Having said that, Fairfield is still big on the Arts scene through other channels, i.e. putting up school-wide plays and having aesthetic concerts; a healthy ratio of students are interested in and are open to reading and literature. Since the school is predominantly English speaking, students are more receptive of Literature as a subject although my class was skeptical of the subject since most of them intend to decide on the triple science combination and if they were to take Literature, it would be an extra subject.
The English department, especially Literature teachers are in demand as there are only about six Literature teachers in the whole school, catering to students from sec 2s to sec 4s. These literature teachers are, however, passionate about the subject and are working very hard to make literature as accessible as possible by creating fun and engaging lessons, as well as reinstate Literature as a subject in Secondary 1.
Assessment methods:
As for the assessment methods, continual tests appear to be a norm of formative assessment. In the previous term, students had 4 major components to score in for CA. They had to sit for 2 tests , complete 1 group presentation on the Khmer culture as well as a group Photo Essay project, where students had to focus on specific scenes in the texts, reenact and chronicle them through at least 20 photos.
Fairfield is also a school that loves ICT. My CT created a google site where each Sec 2 lit class had a page of their own, where they can submit their work and/or respond to reflection questions. Each class has a class page where teachers could post questions for reflections (just like this one) to serve the function of making sure that the students have not only read their texts but understand its contents with greater depth.
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Having been through Practicum, one main takeaway for me is the importance of how passionate the teacher is of what he or she does as the enthusiasm and passion for the subject rubs off and is positively channeled into the way he or she teaches, and therefore, benefitting the students.
I taught Secondary 3 Pure and Elective Literature in Crescent Girls’ School. The students are introduced to two books at the sec 3 level, The Chrysalids and The Crucible. Almost most of the students in the school speak English well and come from English-speaking backgrounds. So, there were many students taking pure literature in this school. Those who were a little weaker took elective literature. I had 40 students in my pure literature class and 9 students in the elective literature class. The school is a Microsoft Leader school and a future school, so every lesson should have some form of ICT and collaborative work. For literature, there were many debates, class discussions, role-playing, hot-seating, reader’s theater and many other collaborative activities that were carried out to get students to think about themes, characters, symbols, etc that were related to the books. The students were mainly assessed by their group presentations and bi-weekly essay tests. I found that teaching the pure literature class was challenging, yet rewarding because the students loved to voice their opinions and discuss more about certain topics that were assigned in the SOW. However, it was very challenging for me as a beginning teacher to try and integrate ICT for literature every lesson. I had students use Google docs, Wordle, bubblus, glogster, blogs, YouTube and linoit for group work. Students really loved using these applications and a lot of great ideas and discussions stemmed from the group work and presentations. However, I still had to resort to using PPT presentations for the beginning of most lessons to explain certain concepts and quotes to students, especially the elective literature class. Overall, I learned that less teacher-talk and more student-centered learning really makes literature classes more meaningful and fun. However, it is essential that teachers give students explicit instructions on the board with time-limits, so that students are more productive. Another important point that I learned during practicum is to make sure that students understand the historical background and context of the play/novel very well. The extra time spent explaining the historical context in the beginning will help students explore themes and ideas better in future classes.
ReplyDeleteThe Sec 3s at Chung Cheng were doing Romeo &Juliet and they were assessed based on their contributions towards the performance of the abridged version during the September holidays.
ReplyDeleteThe students were allowed to indicate how they'd like to contribute on a form in Term 2 and the actors went through auditions during the June holidays.
I'm not sure of how the students are assessed because my lessons were not directly related to the production.
One thing I've learnt is the importance of having one focus for each lesson and if possible, allow the students to take home something in the form of a completed handout/ notes/ annotations in their books, etc.
There were a lot of things that I wanted to achieve in one lesson and I was confused and annoyed when the students from one class couldn't keep up with my pace, unlike the other 2 classes. I realized over time that this class engages in a very different manner and that the same lesson plan may not work for all the classes.
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ReplyDeleteI taught Catherine Lim's short story- The Bondmaid, as well as The Balcony Scene of R&J during my practicum at First Toa Payoh.
ReplyDeleteTo say that teaching 2E1, 2N1A & 2N1B was 'challenging' would be an understatement of the highest order. Not only did I have to deal with perpetual absenteeism, time constraint (2x 35 mins/week), and a myriad of classroom management problems, I could not even get some of the students to buy/bring/read the text.
My CT Mdm Zarinah was extremely supportive and helpful, but making lessons as fun as possible whilst ensuring that I covered the text was not easy. On top of which, writing was an insurmountable task, as the students had language difficulties and could not articulate their ideas at a very elementary level.
Nevertheless, my students were quite empathetic, mature, and worldly in thought- the major impediment to their motivation and engagement in literature was quite simply the intimidation of language. As far as possible, I tried to bring characters to life and encourage perspective-taking, to facilitate accessibility and relevance to the text.
We practically gave the students the questions to their tests, but still had a high percentage of failures, which was honestly rather disappointing. Most of my students opted to take lit at sec 3 (it was previously not offered before). Before practicum, I would have had no qualms pushing for lit as as an elective at the 'O' Levels, but I must admit that I now consider the prospect with mixed feelings and much trepidation.
Practicum was, for the lack of a better word, truly SHITTY! However, I will spare you the agony of reading a 'bitch-mmentary' (commentary with tons of bitching) as I believe this post will be assessed.
ReplyDeleteApparently, assessment is the true purpose of education isn't it? Sigh....
Anyway, I was posted to Kranji Secondary and I taught Lit to a Sec 2 Express class who had just been introduced to Animal Farm By George Orwell.
Kranji Sec's Express students had a PSLE T-score of between 230-253. Therefore, I had under my charge mostly medium to high ability students.
I found teaching Lit far more challenging and rewarding than teaching English.Preparing for each Lit lesson meant a tremendous amount of research on my part as I wanted to be absolutely sure about what I was teaching my students. As my CT was not available for consultations most of the time ( she was 8 mths pregnant), I worked independently.
I had to start from Chap 3 and I took a linear approach, going from chapter to chapter. I basically just followed my CT's style so as not to confuse and disengage my students. I had to bear in mind their disinterested attitude towards the subject.
I conducted a number of activity-based lessons. I introduced Chapter 3 by asking students to complete a ranking chart. In groups of 4 or 5, students had to rank the animals in Animal Farm in order of most powerful to least powerful. I printed out an A3 sized chart for each group and prepared animal cut-outs for them. For the ranking exercise, they had to determine how powerful an animal by considering factors such as their reading and writing ability, leadership skills and privileges accorded to them.
Similarly, students worked in groups to create a map of the 'Battle of Cowshed' in Chapter 4. I created the layout of the farm on pieces of drawing block and provided students with magic markers and colour pencils. Students then referred to descriptions in their text and drew out the three lines of attack and the animals involved in each one of them. They specified the locations where the attacks took place and even attempted to figure out Napoleon's hiding place ( as this was not mentioned in the book)
In terms of the use of ICT, I used Linoit and Wallwisher to a great extent. The Sec 2 class I had were rather quiet and did not respond actively during class discussions. When I used these online tools to elicit responses from them, I realised to my surprise that I got many quality responses which I could use to delve into deeper discussions about themes of propaganda, equality, etc.
Students also engaged in self-directed learning when they had to to do their own research ( based on a list of websites I gave to them) about the different types of propaganda techniques commonly used. They then had to apply the knowledge gained from their research to identify and find evidence of the use of these propaganda techniques in their text.
The most exciting lesson was definitely the one where the students had to perform a role-play/skit in their groups in an attempt to recreate the famous scene where Napoleon banishes Snowball from the farm with his nine vicious dogs. I allocated one period for the students to prepare their script and used a double period for the performances. I allowed students to be creative while reminding them to stick to the plot. It was an explosive two periods and all the two groups surpassed my expectations in terms of the script they came up with, the props they used and how dramatically they recreated the scene. I even had Animal Farm, local version peppered with Singlish, but it was executed brilliantly in the correct context. Their performance grades formed part of their common test scores.
The biggest reward I had at the end of the 10 weeks was when, on the last day of term, the students gave me a gigantic card with all of their comments written on it and one of them had wrote “ Thank you for not making me sleep during Literature lessons like I did the whole of last year!”