Hey guys~
I’ll be doing a review of http://www.learnnc.org/lessons/.
Basically, LEARN NC provides teaching resources as well as relevant information
about teaching in classrooms. I've picked three lesson plans that I thought
would be suitable for teaching secondary school students in Singapore.
1. Poetry Through Music (http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/2905?ref=search) In this introductory lesson to poetry, students will
learn poetry terminology and figurative language through the use of song lyrics.
They will participate in an activity where they have to arrange the lines of the
song in the correct order.
In this lesson, the students will be comparing two
poems and list down their similarities and differences. Then, they will discuss
the techniques/devices used in the poems before attempting to write their own
poems based on what they have learnt.
The idea here is to let the students role-play
different characters from a short story and discuss the scene and the ending of
the story. At the end of the lesson, they may also evaluate the ending with
regards to today’s social issues.
Review:
1. The use of song lyrics as an introduction to poetry is likely
to grab the students’ attention, especially if it’s a song that they already know.
We can use a proper poem to follow up with the song, and ask them to pick out
the various aspects of poetry (rhyme, imagery etc.)
2. I think this is a good way to get the students to recognize
the different poetic devices. Since group work is a form of collaborative
learning, the students will be able to learn from one another as different
people have different ways of interpreting things. Writing their own poem will
also encourage their creativity skills.
3. It’s always good to
expose students to role-playing as it gives them a first-hand experience of
drama and acting. I personally feel that students will be able to understand
the story better if they attempt to see things from the characters’
perspective.
(152 words)
like the song idea as well. can we get students to compose a song as well, and include the characters and events? :) just a suggestion. haha.
ReplyDeleteI think we can... As long as the song follows the structure of a poetry or at least rhymes or sumth? Hahaa
DeleteI like the song idea too. On a somewhat-related note, it reminds me that I used to use The Lucksmith's "Adolescent Song of Mindless Devotion" to teach literary devices. And I agree that role-playing does seem to have students get into the heads of the characters, so to speak.
ReplyDeleteHi Maz,
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I must say that I totally agree with the song idea. I used Taylor Swift's 'Love Story' during my ESE stint as an introduction to poetry for secondary one kids, and they loved it to bits! The neighbouring classes couldn't wait for their literature lessons so that they could sing along to the song in class. I used it to teach persona, audience, subject matter, and theme, though I believe it can songs can be used to teach rhyme and characterisation as well. Using songs as poems also helps to overcome the kids' fear that poetry is all about stuffy verses that are too "cheem" for them, which will make them more open to tackling poetry in class.
Secondly, I'd like to share my experience with the Seeing Two Poems idea. Following my school's lit department SOW, I also tried that out during ESE using two of Shakespeare's sonnets on my secondary two students: 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day' and 'My mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun'. I took the students through each poem, getting them to identify the metaphors used, as well as the tone, and got them to think about the main idea of the poem, as well as the poet's thoughts on the main idea. Then, we got them to look at the two poems concurrently and respond by voting which they would use if they were to confess their love for someone. That got them thinking about the similarities and differences in the use of poetic devices across both poems. I didn't manage to get them to write their own poems though. I wonder if they would have felt confident enough to do so.
Love and contemporary pop songs are a great way to get students involved! Getting students to make a stand is also a good ideas in forcing evaluation and response.
Deleteusing two poems is a great idea. There is research to suggest that we learn through contrast so having two poems helps students see similarities as well as compare. Itvalways helps to have more than one!
ReplyDelete