Hey all!
I thought I should share a website with you that might help us reflect better as teachers.
This site basically asks us to question similar things that we’ve already discussed like “why lit?” “how to teach lit?” and also other cool questions like “what texts to select?” , “Do I have to teach the canon?” etc. So it’s a good checklist for ourselves, I think. It helps also because I feel that it can help us find direction in our teaching of a text. Some of the chapters discuss questions like:
- How do I get them to talk about literature?
- Using narratives in the classroom: what’s the use of a story?
- Multiple Perspectives to Engage Students with Literature: What are Different Ways of Seeing?
Idea #2:
The good thing is also, there are many related activities that we can attempt under each question, and these can be tweaked to become effective lesson plans in our local contexts. Our kids probably need a lot of contextualization and often, I find it a bit difficult to plan for such contextualization, but this site gives a lot suggested ideas on how to pre-introduce/ ground a text for them.
This, for example, gives ideas about how to set the classroom climate right, like using methods like teaching them how to teach and mark each other’s work, so that they feel more ownership. And from this, how we can get students to talk about lit and how to discuss texts in a more substantiated manner.
Idea #3:
My other favourite part of this site is the list of resources/links that the site has collated for us, under subheadings like “poetry”, “drama”, “world literature” etc. Under each topic, there is a list of available resources on the internet sorted by genre, by topic and by skill. There are some study guides too. The sites they’ve linked to are really not too bad, unlike some rather shoddy essays we can find sometimes, simply by googling. :)
I think it’s a good place to look for resources! So enjoy!
Love,
Ritchell (:
Ritchell (:
Hey Ritchell! I agree with you on the part where one needs to plan for contextualisations. Especially in the beginning of our teaching experiences in lit...We need an archive like the one we are creating so that we can make literature more interesting than taxing for the students. thanks for the link!
ReplyDeletecheers
sri
hey chell! yes i came across this site and it is useful in helping us to sort out our own questions of what lit is and what are the BIG IDEAS that we want to teach/convey as we are teaching lit. What i also liked was how they provided suggestions to questions like, how do i get kids to start talking about lit? and they gave really good guidelines for us to consider: teacher or student-directed? and it actually gave a 'real life' experience example. that was pretty cool! thanks for sharing :)
ReplyDeletecaroline