Hi everyone! Since all the reviews so far have dealt with the broader approaches to teaching Literature (with the exception of Ed, whose resource focused specifically on Shakespeare), I thought I’d offer something something that specifically addresses the teaching of poetry.
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Resource: Lyrical Lessons Online: Poetry Lessons for Teachers and Students
This website is a one-stop resource for an teacher’s entire unit on poetry and comes not only with suggestions for activities, worksheets and resources, but also with sample lesson plans. As the entire unit consists of 25 lessons (and it is pointless if I analyse each lesson on its own), I shall provide you with a summary and review of the website’s offerings:
- Scope of unit is effective in its introduction to various forms of poetry but too extensive to be incorporated wholesale in an actual school syllabus. Needs to be broken down and restructured. Related topics (e.g. simile, metaphor, and personification) can be combined to form one lesson. Some topics can be taught in relation to prose or set-text.
- Suggested lesson materials and plans are clear and well-structured. It is a good reference point for teachers planning their own lessons. However, lesson flow may need to be adapted for the beginner literature student, with more time spent on instruction and exposure to a variety of poem samples.
- Suggested activities are effective and level-appropriate for lower secondary literature classes. However, some activities (especially those that assume students have sufficient prior knowledge of the English Language) may require more scaffolding in the form of guided practice.
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All that said, do bear in mind that, while the individual lesson objectives are rather similar to what we expect from our classes, the entire unit objectives appear to veer in the direction of general appreciation rather than as a foundation for critical analysis, which is the ultimate aim of our literature syllabus. Hence, I wouldn’t recommend using this unit (or even the individual lessons) in its existing form -- they definitely need to be adapted to suit the demands of our local context.
I totally agree! most (if not all) the teaching resources are useful but they can never be used asis because we have to consider a number of issues (culture, religious connotations, national ideologies etc) when formulating our lesson plans. So as you said, while the resources themselves are interesting and useful, it is up to us to reformulate them to suit the unique classroom environments that each of us will be exposed to when we head out there into the wild wilderness of the teaching world.
ReplyDeleteHi Xinhui, this looks like a very useful site! Picking up on your point about the assumed level of English Language competency, I do agree that this can be a difficulty when we look at web resources. Many of these resources are developed for "native speakers" of EL, and the language competency assumed may be quite different from that of many of our students, even in the express stream. I took a look at the lesson plan for puns, for example, and know that I will probably have to do a lot more scaffolding before that activity can be carried out. The ideas presented in this website remain useful, however, even if they only serve as triggers for more ideas.
ReplyDeleteGood point about needing to adapt it to specific classrooms. As the website itself caveats, it is a resource bank and individual links need to be checked. The lessons vary (some are really simple but provide a good source eg. similes and metaphors). Ma be good for some classes but too simple for some. On the flip side, some are too difficult and require more scaffolding.
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