roses among thorns?

Drama is introduced in the new KBSM literature component for 2010 for the lower and upper secondary together with new poems and short stories. Rumplelstiltskin by Angela Lanyon is used for the lower secondary while Gulp and Gasp by John Townsend for the upper secondary. Will it be roses or thorns for the teachers as well as the students? It all depends on the teachers approach and the students acceptance. 

Opening the door to the world of creative arts

Teaching literature is a challenging task if our students are not interested in it. Teachers have to give room to the students and opportunity to express their view and thoughts and appreciate their involvement. Feedback and comments from teachers do not have to be always positive, there are times we need to response to the students answers by asking them to support their stand with more textual evidence. Literature is pieces of creative writing, which can be also valued as work of arts, that can arouse interest in reading and also enhance language competency. Cultural models, language models and personal growth models for teaching literature can be applied when we teach literature in order to stimulate their interest and develop the cognitive and affective domains of the students.

“Teaching literature is a subject, and a difficult one. Doing it well requires scholarly and critical sophistication, but it also requires a clear idea of what literature is, of what is entailed in reading and criticizing it. It requires, in fact, some very self-conscious theorizing. But beyond the questions that ought to feed any serious critic’s sense of what doing literature might mean, there are questions about the relation between such sophistication, and the necessities of the classroom: what, how, and when are students more likely to learn?" (Levine,2001:14)

discovering the hidden “pearls” in “The Pearl”

I truly enjoy teaching my form 5 tuition students “The Pearl” ,a novel by John Steinbeck and it’s an amazing experience for me. At first most of my students who attended my class did not like literature, especially the novel. It was a challenge for me but I accepted it as God’s test for me. I tried to look through the rose tinted glasses, and I put more effort to bring the life to the literature lesson. I wrote a brief synopsis and concise summaries of the six chapters of the novel for my students to read .Then I told my students that we can never love this novel by just holding it; so we have to read it, explore it, go inside it, and imagine that we are there with them. I told them to put their love in what they are reading, and as they read the novel, I asked them to observe the characters and the way they talk, act and interact with other characters, and take note of the sequence of events from the beginning, rising action, climax, falling action and ending. Then I discussed with them the characterization of the characters. “ Insight into characters in literary texts could also derived directly through the characters’ actions, speech and thoughts. A character’s actions, speech and thoughts in any situation would throw light on his personality and character traits.”(Edwin,2004) I love to hear their different opinions regarding the characters of Kino, Juana, the pearl buyers, the doctor, Juan Tomas, Apolonia, the priest and the trackers. The most interesting part is when the students tried to bring out the theme of the novel together with the moral values and lessons that they have learned, they finally discovered the situational irony in the novel.