www.philmon.tumblr.com

(Hi, sorry for uploading two posts, just realised I read the course instruction wrongly and had to re-do it, my apologies.)

This recommended website is a blog written by a Singaporean student embarking on a project that documents Singapore history. As the title of his blog Document and Decay suggests, pictures themselves will fade one day, words alone will elude the marginal, who will be there to preserve our culture if we ourselves don’t appreciate what we have. The powerful pictures that he captured articulate the voices of Singaporeans who live on the margin. It helps that the author has a good grasp of the language to be able to paint these dynamics into evoking words. By showing students this blog, we could generate three activities:

1.        Introducing Singapore Literature and Culture

Through the pictures, each student could be assigned one picture from the blog and compose a prose out of it. They could add in their own interpretation of the picture, and to assimilate their own experiences of Singapore into their prose. This works well as an icebreaking activity for foreign students to infuse themselves into the environment they are settling in, and a good national education activity for local students. This enhances their sense of sensitivity towards life in the secluded corners of Singapore. Writing a prose would probably be the best kick-start activity to start an introductory lesson because students are most familiar with narrative writing.

2.       Fieldtrip

Students could then be brought down to the locations mentioned in the pictures as an excursion for them to experience firsthand the lives of these people. Students could be tasked a poetry assignment to pen down their thoughts and experiences that their five senses detected. It taps on experiential learning where students get to learn by doing and to apply the classroom poetic techniques into real-world context.

3.       The Abstract

At the end of it all, students could come out with a drama skit that allows them a channel to express their own experiences in a metropolitan society. Do they share the same sentiments as the less fortunate or do they think otherwise?

In particular, page 8 of the blog touches on an interesting concept of the displacement in ‘time’ and ‘space.’ The author seeks to address and explore the displacement and ambiguity of ‘time’ and ‘space’ as tangible elements. Often, when the term ‘bedtime’ comes to mind, we envision ourselves safely tucked into the privacy of a warm bed, cloaked in the stillness, and darkness of night-time. However, when that comfort is being displaced in the middle of a busy street, within a shop during business-hours, or in the middle of a road, do we still consider that as ‘bedtime’? Here after, we are forced to rationalise between what is true and false; is the reality being falsified, or is falsehood being given credibility and being realised? When challenged with such juxtapositions, our minds struggle to grapple with the pre-conceived notions of what ‘time’ and ‘space’ are.

This is a good idea to get students to write a drama script on the abstract to express this whole experience of displacement into something visual and authenticated. Students could be scafoldded to present on how their usual bedtime is like, and how this whole concept of the familiar could be distorted into something foreign and chaotic. They could make use of this chance to articulate the voices within them that frustrate and bottle them up (or otherwise) in a modern society. One note of precaution, this lesson plan is more suitable for students of a 'higher' ability because the idea of the abstract is a difficult concept to handle.

(Sorry once again.)