This webpage is a unit
plan that seeks to teach Grade 10 students (roughly Secondary 3 or Secondary 4
students in the Singaporean context) the different elements of plot.
3 ideas:
- The idea of using a short story as a way of introducing students to prose analysis is good, but perhaps we could analyse Singaporean/Malaysian short stories instead of Sherlock Holmes stories. The closer cultural background will make these stories more accessible for local students.
- Sending students out to record observations about people is an interesting idea because it will make them more aware of character details. However, we should also emphasise the adage not to “judge a book by its cover”.
- I like the idea of asking students to present their oral stories individually to their classmates. However, I am wondering whether this activity might be too time-consuming in a class of 40 students.
I like the question you posted, whether oral stories presented will be too time-consuming for a class of 40 students. Might I suggest a technique? Maybe what can be done is to break up students into 5 groups of 8 members. In each group, get them to play a series of games to understand the importance of oral communication in terms of plot. So maybe they can play broken telephone, after that chained story, or maybe a simple icebreaker like remembering the details of every single member of the group. Through these games, students will learn that the oral tradition of literature was to honour their past traditions and memory was essential.
ReplyDeleteHi Wee Kiat, that's a great idea! The broken telephone game sounds like a good way of introducing the students to the topic of oral stories.
ReplyDeleteOral stories is good for thinking about perspective as well - who's telling the story and for what purpose.I suppose if the oral story is a creative activity, it could work at the end of term as an assessment. But I wonder if the students would need to prepare by writing their oral story first?
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