Reflection #4 (due 9 March, Saturday)

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1. Describe the state of literature in your school - state how many classes are taking pure and elective lit at upper sec, how many students are there in each class, what texts are being used. Describe the state of lit in your school - Are teachers passionate about lit? Does the principal emphasize lit? how do the students perceive lit? What are the typical approaches to teaching and assessment?

2. Refer to debates in the media last week (see ST report "Big drop in number of students taking literature" on Feb 25 followed by forum articles and Sunday Times report). Get involved in the discussion and give your views on these matters e.g. what have you learnt from the discussion? What troubles you about the discussion? What is your own opinion about the value of lit or factors accounting for its decline based on what you’ve observed in your own school?  

QCR523 Posting 3: Learning Journey Reflections

Reflect on your class learning journey. What are some principles and practices that you can take away from the experience?

Deadline: 23 February 2013 MN

QCR523 Posting 2: Alternative Assessments

Explore in some depth one kind of alternative assessment. You may:

(1) Read one of the optional articles from Weeks 3 to 4. 
(2) Google or do a literature search on the same or similar form of alternative assessment. 
(3) Explore some other idea not mentioned in your readings.
  
Share about your readings and your thoughts about the specific form of assessment discussed. You should use this as an opportunity to explore an alternative assessment that you may be interested in for either your essay assignment or for your own classroom execution.

Deadline: 9 Feb 2013, Sat, Noon

QCR523 Posting 1: Purpose of Assessment

From your readings and your classroom discussions and activities, what is one principle of effective assessment that you would define for yourself as a classroom teacher?
Deadline: 20 Jan, Sun 2359 hrs.

Jodee's Reflections

PLEASE POST ABOUT: (1) 3 TIPS FOR TEACHING/ CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT/ PLANNING GLEANED FROM MICROTEACHING. (2) GIVE SPECIFIC EXAMPLES FROM YOUR OWN OR OTHER LESSON OBSERVATION.
1) Make seemingly difficult and obscure terms understandable and applicable to the students

At times, when we start out teaching students that we are not yet familiar with, we tend to overestimate or underestimate their abilities when it comes to teaching them new concepts. Especially for a subject like literature, where many carry a preconception that it is obscure, difficult to score in an examination and that it is irrelevant to their lives, I find it very important to keep that in mind, so that I can hopefully debunk those ideas in my lessons during the course of the year. I especially liked Andrea's simple activity where students got to experience discrimination as something arbitrary and senseless. This made a seemingly difficult idea immediately relatable and relevant by encouraging movement in the class, at the same time making literature fun.

2) Encourage a safe and participative classroom culture

Especially in a learning environment where students are expected to sit and absorb information that is being given to them, it might be difficult at the start to get students to voice out their opinions and speak up in class. I've learnt that it helps to lighten the classroom atmosphere with humour, as Brennan and Samuel have proven in their lessons. Their friendly and approachable tone of voice and questioning methods help encourage the students to attempt at providing answers to the questions posed. Debates such as those conducted in Wee Kiat and Damien's lessons also encourage a participative culture, and forces students to take a stand and defend their beliefs. This means that students are now active participants with a personal stake in their learning.

3) Making literature seem easy doesnt mean you have to dumb it down

I was impressed with the way Pepper, Mark and Jia Min incorporated difficult literary terms eg. metaphysical into their lesson to great effect - students were neither thrown into the deep end to struggle with the terms nor had the term drilled/force fed to them. In Mark's case they were taught to break down the larger term into its root word, and his explanations tapped on the student's prior knowledge by linking various other subjects such as geography and history in a true multi-disciplinary manner. Perhaps, it is important to remember that while we attempt to make literature simple and understandable, we still have to give them the right terms to work with, albeit with a gentle introduction, an interesting lead in activity or more scaffolding as they work through the meaning of the literary term.

Tiying's Reflections

PLEASE POST ABOUT: (1) 3 TIPS FOR TEACHING/ CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT/ PLANNING GLEANED FROM MICROTEACHING. (2) GIVE SPECIFIC EXAMPLES FROM YOUR OWN OR OTHER LESSON OBSERVATION.

Tip 1) From my own microteaching, I learnt that while it is good to be firm and strict, too much firmness may impede the flow of discussion. Students need a safe environment before they feel like they can voice their opinions. 
In this aspect, I believe that Mark has done a really good job. His humor made his class fun and enjoyable, and I believe that his students will find class discussions and debates natural in class. I'm not a humorous person though, so I'll admire his classroom management style and create more scaffolding questions to help my students think deeper on the text.

Tip 2) It might be good to remember that students are not familiar with certain technical terms that we have taken for granted. Words like "feminism", "social stratification", are very confusing for students and they tend to lose interest easily. It would be good to spend more time dwelling on such words and allow students to develop an awareness and understanding of such words.

Tip 3) Brennan's debate class is also a good way of forcing students (like me) to speak out more in class. By having students discuss in groups first before having certain students present also allows them to have some mental preparation. So, instead of merely calling on students suddenly (and thus giving them the shock of their lives), it might be good for students to be prepared first. Their discussions would also be more productive, thoughtful, and responsible since they have more time to form opinions and justify them. 

Jason's Microteaching Reflections

PLEASE POST ABOUT: (1) 3 TIPS FOR TEACHING/ CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT/ PLANNING GLEANED FROM MICROTEACHING. (2) GIVE SPECIFIC EXAMPLES FROM YOUR OWN OR OTHER LESSON OBSERVATION.


Protip #1: Always start with 'Once Upon a Time...' (Or rather, storytelling is one of the best ways to teach literature) 

I remember myself saying, at the very beginning of the semester, that the act of teaching literature is the act of storytelling. This notion was reinforced through the various micro-teaching sessions: from Samuel's simple made-up story to illustrate his point about 'fairness' to Brennan's hilarious story of being discriminated, and even to the silly story of the man climbing (and falling from) the plot diagram I came up with during my session. Beyond all the multimodal materials we have at our fingertips (such as comic strips or video clips), I feel that simple storytelling remains the most effective and imaginative way to engage students, because it requires an act of imagination (as opposed to having it visually flashed out in front of them), a skill that is absolutely essential to the appreciation of literary texts.


Protip #2: Too many cooks spoil the broth (Or rather, trying to do too many things ruin the lesson)

The beauty of literature is that everything is interrelated: but the problem about teaching literature is that you cannot really teach this interrelatedness in the classroom.  We all know that literary form is linked to technique  that is linked to narrative that is linked to conflict that is linked to theme that is linked to characterization. However, it is absolutely impossible to compress everything to the duration of one period: and so instead of trying to teach this interrelatedness directly in a single sitting, we should teach them the individual elements, then pull everything together at the end. Across the various micro-teaching sessions, there seemed to be a distinction between lessons that tried to achieve much and did little, and lessons that tried to teach one thing but made a huge impact on students understanding.  The flip side, exploring some aspects of interrelatedness also helps push students towards higher-order thinking: we must thus find the balance between depth and breadth. 


Protip #3: If unable to swim, enter at the shallow end! (Or rather, point of entry is everything)

Framing is incredibly important.  Through the course of my micro-teaching, I realized that there are many ways to approach the teaching of literary elements and devices: choosing the right point-of-entry is important to ensure student understanding.  If a ineffective point of entry is employed (like in my own micro-teaching), no amount of scaffolding will make up for the confusion that will result from students feeling disorientated.  Thus, I have to consider carefully what the students know at that point of the lesson, how the lesson is situated in the overall unit plan, and how each lesson element will flow into one another.  Throwing students into the 'deep end' and leaving out the swimming lessons will result in subsequent drowning.