Targetting the lower Secondary students, I've found three websites that made Literature comprehensible and accessible to them. This is crucial as much has been said about Literature ending at lower Secondary, so we have to make Literature interesting in order to ignite the students' passion to pursue it further.
As garnered, Literature has to be made excitable, and multimedia is a good way to stimulate students' interest. Many at times Literature has to be read aloud (continuing from Danielle's idea) and no other sources other than videos is best able to achieve this. For instance, the topic on Tone and Mood simply cannot be taught based on worksheets alone. It has to be animated in order to bring across the subtle differences between the two concepts. Simply put, Tone refers to the attitude of the writer towards the subject, and Mood refers to the feelings evoked in the literary work. Recognizing Tone and Mood when reading is an essential skill needed to fully understand any narrative. One should always try to picture the meaning of the words. The YouTube search engine is also a good source for other videos related to Literature per se.
versus
Shakespeare made easy. Inevitably the works of Shakespeare is pivotal in Literature curriculum. The online No Fear Shakespeare is available for free and the full text plus analysis are uploaded. Resources on other texts are also available on Sparknotes.
Last but not least, what do we do when students ask us for the definition of a literary term that happened to be out of our memory? Panic not and just go to this all-in-one-webpage and click on the terms we would like to enquire. The perk is that all critical terms are summarised into a single home page and our answer is just a click away. Sweat no more about having to flip through multiples pages before reaching our desired literary term or having to check alphabet by alphabet. The best reward is that we can do a quick search online behind our computer screen without having to flip the manual sutra in front of our students that will gain us demerit points!
Hi kai, I like your recommendations. I remember teachers often warn us against using sparknotes, but as a student I had always found it a very useful resource (more helpful than the teacher at times ;p). Instead of stopping students from using it, teachers could ask students to add onto the notes to ensure that they do not copy the analysis blindly. And I love spongebob!;)
ReplyDeleteHello Kai! I like the youtube video that you selected. It makes it easier for students to relate to emotions, not forgetting that it is alot more fun when displayed through a video rather than just words which is what they have to deal with most of the time.
ReplyDeleteHey Kai,
ReplyDeleteI agree that videos help to stimulate the interests of the students as they are largely visual now. It is always good to show the students that Literature can be associated with multimedia that is popular today instead of poets and writers who are far beyond their reach.
Rathiy