Task 2: Teaching the Unseen Characterization

Sorry for the delay. Was busy with exams and revisions.

Story: Father and Son from "Or Else the Lightnight God" by Catherine Lim

Students must have prior knowledge of the plot.

Objective: to study the character of the Father.

1. Students form a group and each group is to pick a scene from the story where there is interaction between the Father and the Son or the Father with the rest of the family.
2. Students are to act out the scene using a 'Freeze Frame' technique.
3. Students must know the characters they are playing and to formulate thoughts about the situation and their feelings about the Father.
4. Groups take turns to act out their "freeze Frame". Teacher will then tap on each character to make them 'alive' and say out their thoughts about Father.
5. Students from other groups take down notes on what other characters feel and think about the Father.
6. At the end of the "Freeze Frame' session, groups discuss on Father's character from the notes.
7. Groups then write down their answers on butcher sheets and present their answers.

Zarinah
First Toa Payoh Secondary

Task 2: Approaching the Unseen Prose Question (Characterisation)

1) Trigger activity:

Teacher will write the following questions on the white board:

Think of a moment in your childhood where you were forced to do something you did not like. How did it make you feel?

How did you feel about your parents who made you do it? Why do you think your parents may have wanted you to do it?

Students will be given a few minutes to pen their thoughts down and after that, the teacher will call on students to write their answers on the board for discussion.

[This activity is carried out to tap on students' prior knowledge and will also serve as points they can use for their own personal response for the unseen prose used later]

2) Video

The teacher will then play students a video showing a scene from The Joy Luck Club, about Waverly Jong who is a chess champion, and her mother. Waverly seems forced into playing chess and feels some resentment towards her mother for it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSoKfVen-9M

[This video actually is the film adaptation of the text and shows part of the unseen passage].

After watching the video, the teacher will elicit response from the students on the following questions:

What is your impression of Waverly and her mother from the video?

Based on your earlier writing, can you identify with the characters?

3) Unseen prose activity

After the discussion, the teacher will give out the following passage to the students.

~*~

I no longer played in the alley of Waverly Place. I never visited

the playground where the pigeons and old men gathered. I

went to school, then directly home to learn new chess

secrets, cleverly concealed advantages, more escape

routes.

But I found it difficult to concentrate at home. My mother had a

habit of standing over me while I plotted out my games. I

think she thought of herself as my protective ally. Her lips

would be sealed tight, and after each move I made, a soft

“Hmmmmph” would escape her nose.

“Ma, I can’t practice when you stand there like that,” I said one

day. She retreated to the kitchen and made loud noises with

the pots and pans. When the crashing stopped, I could see

out of the corner of my eye that she was standing in the

doorway. “Hmmmmph” Only this one came out of her tight

throat.

My parents made many concessions to allow me to practice.

One time I complained that the bedroom I shared was so

noisy that I couldn’t think. Thereafter, my brothers slept in

a bed in the living room facing the street. I said I couldn’t

finish my rice; my head didn’t work right when

my stomach was too full. I left the table with half-

finished bowls and nobody complained.

But there was one duty I couldn’t avoid . I had to accompany

my mother on Saturday market days when I had no

tournament to play. My mother would proudly walk

with me, visiting many shops, buying very little. “This is my

daughter Wave-ly Jong,” she said to whoever looked her

way.

One day, after we left a shop I said under my breath, “I wish

you wouldn’t do that, telling everybody I’m your daughter.”

My mother stopped walking. Crowds of people with heavy

bags pushed past us on the sidewalk, bumping into first

one should, then another.

“Aii-ya. So shame be with mother?” She grasped my hand even

tighter as she glared me.

I looked down. “It’s not that, it’s just so obvious. It’s just so

embarrassing.”

“Embarrass you be my daughter?” Her voice was cracking with

anger.

“That’s now what I meant. That’s now what I said.”

“What you say?”

I knew it was a mistake to say anything more, but I heard

my voice speaking. “Why do you have to use me to show

off? If you want to show off, then why don’t you learn

to play chess.”

My mother’s eyes turned into dangerous black slits. She

had no words for me, just sharp silence.

I felt the wind rushing around my hot ears. I jerked my

hand out of my mother’s tight grasp and spun around,

knocking into an old woman. Her bag of groceries spilled

to the ground.

“Aii-ya! Stupid girl!” my mother and the woman cried. Oranges

and tin cans careened down the sidewalk. As my mother

stooped to help the old woman pick up the escaping food,

I took off.

From The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.

~*~

After the trigger activity and watching the video, the students would be able to have a clear

understanding of the passage.

In groups, they are to discuss the following questions, using their own responses from the

previous activities as a springboard to develop their answers.

1) In the first paragraph, the girl, Waverly Jong, tells us that she no longer plays ‘in the alley’ or visits the ‘playground’. Why has she stopped doing these things? Do you think she is happy or unhappy about not doing them?

2) Who do you sympathise with more in the passage: Waverly, or her mother? Give reasons for your views.

In groups, the students will present their answers to the class. The teacher will give

feedback after each presentation.

-Nur Izyan Mohamed Hashim

Bedok View Secondary School.

Using Creative Methods to Teach Unseen Prose (Methodist Girls' School)

Introductory Activity:

At this point, students have already done characterisation and setting but have not been introduced to mood and atmosphere. The objective of this series of lessons is to help students see that through mood and atmosphere, tension can be created.

As a lead-in activity, students will watch a short excerpt of the original “Mary Poppins” trailer which can be found on you-tube. Individually, students will attempt identify specific elements of the setting and describe the effect the clip has on them. They are to fill in a table provided by the teacher. Ideas will be consolidated in a class discussion.

After this, they are to watch a short excerpt which is a spoof of the “Mary Poppins” trailer. In this spoof, the creator altered the colour, music and deliberately selected scenes that might seem ominous. Students are to attempt to identify specific elements of the setting and what effect it has on them. They are to fill in a table provided by the teacher. Ideas will be consolidated in a class discussion.

Teacher will teach explicitly definitions of tension and suspense and techniques which writers utilise to create tension and suspense. Teacher will explain the use of lighting, environment, sound, symbol, internal conflict, external conflict, pace and diction using powerpoint slides.

 Students will attempt  in groups to answer questions relating to an unseen prose passage, namely “Journey by Night” by Undine Giuseppi.

(a)    What is your impression of the main character”

(b)   How does the setting and atmosphere in the text enhance the sense of fear within the main character?

(c)    What other techniques does the writer use to build up tension in the text? How effective is it?

 At the end of these lessons, students will be assessed on the following:

(a)    Posting of responses on literature blog.

(b)   Students will be assessed not only on their own answers but also their critique of other group’s responses.

Teacher can also comment on student’s work.

Submitted by: Charmaine Renjan, Loy Kar Wai, Marianne Li

                           Methodist Girls’ School (Sec)

Creative way of teaching characterisation

Text chosen: To Kill A Mocking Bird by Harper Lee

Characters: Atticus, Scout, Jem, Boo Radley, Mrs Dubose, Calpurnia, Bob Ewell, Mayella Ewell

Activity 1: Read texts related to the above mentioned characters individually.

Activity 2: Assign one character to each group of about 3 -4 students. Members of the group are to discuss about the character assigned and to identify the character traits. Draw the character based on his/her traits. (Objective: To test the students' ability to analyse the text and identify the character traits.)

Activity 3: Each group will present the picture to the class and the rest of the students are to guess who the character is. (Objective: To test the students' ability in depicting the character accurately according to the description of the text.)

Activity 4: Individually, the students are free to choose any character. Write a character analysis essay citing relevant evidence from the text to support the analysis. (Students will be assessed based on the 'O' Level marking rubric.)

Contributed by: Bryan Lum & Jean Ng

Task 2: Teaching and Assessing an Unseen passage (Characterization).

Chosen extact: Description of Miss Trunchbull from Roald Dahl's 'Matilda'

Pre-reading: Dramatization/Sensory impression
Part 1:
Read a related extract aloud to class, ask students to walk in the manner the character is described. Repeat the exercise perhaps two or three times and have students write a word or phrase to describe the character.

Part 2:
Have students work in groups. One student per group to dramatize the character, the others to react to her presence as described in the extract. Repeat this exercise perhaps twice and have students make notes on how they reacted to the character.


Body of lesson: Character on the wall
Part 1:
Using several images, elicit responses from students as to which more closely resemble their impression of the character. Ask students to justify their decisions using words they came up with in the pre-reading exercise.

Part 2:
Ask students to draw an outline of the character in action, for example, an outline of a person striding, yelling, pointing or in any other ‘freeze frame’ position. Detailed drawings are not necessary. Outlines will suffice.

Within the outline, students will list all the personality traits of the character. They may refer and add words to the vocabulary bank in the pre-reading activity. At this stage, teachers may wish to read the extract for their students one more time just to refresh their memory.

Around the outer portion of the outline, students will list words and phrases that describe:
The IMPRESSION that other people might have of Miss Trunchbull
The kind of MOOD and ATMOSPHERE that is create when such a character is present.

Conclusion: Reading the short extracts
Distribute the extract read earlier for students to read. Using the extract as a reference, students now ELICIT information from the extract and continue to add on to their impression of the character in question. Students can then attempt the an unseen passage focused on characterization, on their own.

Assessment:
Provide students with an unseen passage with a clear focus on characterization. Students will be marked for their ability to identify character trait from what the character says and does as well as how other characters react to the character.


Submitted by: Annisa Sha'aban

Part 2 of the e-learning task

Dear all,

I know everyone must be fearfully busy, but the deadline for the second e-learning task loometh (pasted below).

Ideally you should work in 3s on this. However, if this is proving a logistical nightmare, you can if you must work in smaller groups.

Perhaps you can check in with Dr Loh or myself on this.

With best wishes,

Angus

(ii) In groups of 3 (you can work with classmates from your own or other schools): Drawing upon the ideas and strategies that we have explored during the past three sessions, share a creative way to teach and assess an unseen passage not discussed in class (no more than 500 words) (deadline 19 April 2011).

My Thoughts on Teaching the Unseen

I've been teaching Lower Secondary Literature for three years and I love teaching the Unseen component because it is the most fun! I can choose whichever prose extract or poem I want and at times, customise the entire unit (for the whole stream) to my liking! For example, because I LOVE war poetry, all the Sec 2 students in both Express & Normal Academic are exposed to War Poetry as part of their preparation for the Unseen Poetry component in their exams. *grin* Now that I also teach Upper Secondary Literature, I try not to take away the fun from the Unseen, whenever the opportunity presents itself. And so far, I've been able to do that, perhaps, 90% of the time, since we get to select what we bring into the classroom, in the first place!

I like teaching the Unseen through experential learning. I enjoy getting students to engage with the five senses, where possible. I provide some scaffolding through visuals (my favourite are music videos or pictures) or get my students to perform poetry or the actions in the prose I'm about to introduce them to, just to give you some examples.

Because the students in my Upper Secondary Literature class are rather weak in the English Language and have developed a 'phobia of sorts' to expressing their thoughts confidently, I usually break my lessons up into small portions, always providing (and at times, forcing) some opinion or other, out of my students. I notice that this strategy is slowly, but surely, bearing fruit as they are writing better, and more meaningfully engaging essays.

I guess the most important lessons I have learnt on the teaching of the Unseen in the course of the past year is to pick material that I too enjoy or am intrigued to analyse, to challenge myself to find new and creative ways to introduce and think about the selected material (so that every lesson is different from the last) and to place priority in exposing my 'sheltered' students to a wide variety of material - in terms of theme and style, especially.