Monday 21 March 2011

LeeLian

Part 1: Resources

I like this one, because it offers ideas/lesson plans on how to teach poetry. It has a whole range of activities on how to teach/use poetry. I found another site from a link on poetry teachers which offers funny poetry, its called Giggle Poetry. Now what I like about Giggle Poetry is that it offers this section called "Ask the Poet". The students can read what the poets have said before in interviews about what its like being a poet, stuff like that. I think this reduces the sense of distance and inaccessibility poems often carry, if students can understand the poet better. Since the 2 sites come as a pair, I will rate them together as a 4/5.

To be honest, I like the poetry teachers one better, because I felt that that one was much more comprehensive. This one doesn't really teach fiction as much as it uses fiction for theatre/role play. I suppose it is one way to allow the students to understand what characterisation is. I included this one because I figure, we can always use a tool to teach them characterisation, so here it is. I rate it 3/5.

I know short stories isn't a part of Sec Sch lit, but I think we can start from short stories as a form of induction into the novel. Longer than poems, shorter than novels, they're a great in between to teach them what they need to know, generate interest and reduce fear. Since Siti put up the uk short stories website, I went looking for a different version. :D This one is categorised by authors too, and has online texts of short stories and plays and prose too i think. so go take a look! I give it a 4/5.

Part 2: Interests

- Food
- Shopping
- Exploring little shops and checking out their goods
- Talking to people (I'm not a people-person, I just like to know people's life stories.)
- Reading (right now its manga because I'm lazy. its like reading children's storybooks, no brainer.)

Part 3: Applying Interests to Lit

I like to go into little shops, see the layout they have, the goods they have. I like tribal, boho stuff, so when I see weird little shops selling stuff like that, I like to go in and gawk. I like to walk and explore Chinatown, Bugis, Kampng Glam by myself. Its really fun poking my head into all the shops, looking at the layout, how the old had to make way for the new. All the life stories that went on in those places.

I would like to have them do a walk through of these places, and see with their own eyes the effects of lives on places, and how lives and cultures are presented. But since that's impossible, I figure I can take pictures of these places and shops, and have the students first look at the photos, take 10 sec to think, and then shout out their ideas of the kinds of lives that happened there. After that, they can pick their fav 3 pics, and write a story based on or relating to these 3 pics. I think this will help them in characterisation and setting.

Since I like food too, I would like to have them look at pictures just before lunch, and have them describe the pics and their hunger in metaphors. This will hopefully help them understand imagery better.

1 comment:

  1. Hmm ... places and spaces ... one possibility is to take pictures of their teachers' cubicles and asking if they can guess whose cubicle it is - esp if the staff room is out of bounds - but alternatively, taking a picture of their bedroom or 'personal space' and letting them guess which student lives there - then using zoom f(x) on Windows to focus on various items in the room to discuss how this reveals character etc.

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