Hellos,
I fell on this website which has resource links aplenty! The website basically offers a lot of lesson plans and resources that can be utilized and modified according to the learner profile and environment. One of the foremost ideas that impressed on me was the lesson plan titled 'Mind Pictures:Strategies that enhance Mental Imagery while Reading' (http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/mind-pictures-strategies-that-792.html?tab=3#tabs ). The author of the post suggest a three-step approach to this sort of a pedagogy. Starting with the picture books to establish the theme before the students, then the author proceeds to the text (which should have an accompanying movie adaptation). So, the pedagogical journey from the picture-book to the movie will be an enriching learning journey for the students as they establish the links between the various medias of representation.
There is another interesting idea which we all can use, this idea talks about asking students to choose 3 to 4 songs that they see best describing the prescribed text. If let us say the text is a prose on a teenagers' life, the themes like rebellion, identity-crisis etc. can be sought for while looking for the songs. The stress is on reading the themes and associating them in a multimedia setting. This can be fun and enriching at the same time!
Lastly, I am fascinated with this idea where the teacher asks the students to create blogs from the perspective of their favorite fictional characters. they are exposed to well-written blogs and are guided along over 4-5 lessons in order to come up with their ideas of how a fictional character can think and indeed be made to 'think'!!http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/creating-character-blogs-1169.html
These idea can be taken as inspirations as they largely address American academia, but i feel that they are easily modifiable to local contexts, so Happy Ideating!
Srinivasan Iyer (Sri)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
hi sri,
ReplyDeletei like the character blogging activity too! the criteria for the blog did seem quite high though, with the requirement to add in visuals and links, but i think coming back to the purpose of teaching literature, such an activity would really help in character studies.
students would be familiar with such an online platform, many being regular bloggers themselves, and i think getting the students to comment/edit each other's blogs thoughtfully would be a lot more meaningful than some of the nonsense comments they post on their friend's facebook walls!
will definitely try to try this out in class if i can, thanks! :)
I agree with you See Hwei, I'm also particularly attracted to the idea of using blogs to teach lit as I believe that could stimulate a lot of discussion. Not sure if students would participate actively, but I would really want to give it a try if possible! Thanks Sri for sharing the idea!:)
ReplyDeleteYeah..I agree with Seehwei, we can modify the criteria a bit to suit the classroom.
ReplyDeleteSiew Hui, The student participation is definitely a challenge. W e need to stimulate interesting themes in order to do so.
Thanks
Sri