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.

Teaching the Unseen

I have always based my teaching of the Unseen using the SLIMS and SPECs provided by my department. When I first started teachinf the Unseen to the upper secondary students two years ago, I relied heavily on Suzanne Choo's Mining for Meaning. To date I still use her book as a reference as well as Dr Andrew Leng's Mastering the Unseen. The students found Mining for Meaning easy to follow and useful. I have since added pictures and videos to my lessons. By adding 'weird' materials (students comment), they usually become more interested and are more responsive during the lessons. The challenge is to reel them back towards a more exam-oriented type of texts.

Instructions for rest of e-learning task

Dear all,

Just to remind you of the last two sections of your e-learning tasks.

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).

(iii) Individual (optional): Please post three constructive responses and comments on classmates’ ideas (deadline 26 April 2011).

Teaching the Unseen in Upper Secondary

In teaching the Unseen Prose, I teach the various Literary Elements like, Setting, Mood & Atmosphere, Style, Tension & Suspense etc to the students. Many times, I try to infuse the teaching with visual texts (images or videos) to help students to better understand the various elements.
After I explicitly teach, there students will be given either individual tasks or group tasks where they need to apply what they have just learnt. This way, I get to see whether students have learnt - are they still unclear about certain elements (do they know how to identify them from the texts).

Students will usually discuss/present their answers in class - the other groups are often encouraged to ask questions and not take the answers as it is but to ask if what they say are valid.
This way, it forces the students to think deeper and not be superficial in their answers.

Teaching the Unseen (Anglican High School)

As my school is a Chinese-speaking SAP school, the majority of students have a weak foundation in English. The school also does not have a strong reading culture and many students do not explore reading materials beyond their assigned school texts. Thus, Literature teachers frequently find it an uphill task to engage un-motivated students who find it difficult to read, understand and interpret Unseen poems/prose. To kick-start the students’ inertia and allay their anxieties about reading and interpreting, we would typically start with scaffolding activities to activate the students’ schema and ease them into the text. These scaffolding activities include the use of anticipation guides (true/false questions about a particular theme in the poem that would help the teacher assess the students’ prior knowledge), or group discussion activities on audio or visual stimuli-pictures, posters, advertisements, songs, film clips, etc. These hook activities are sometimes also done to contextualize or situate the poem/passage so that it becomes less culturally or linguistically alien for the students.

Not only are these activities less intimidating and more manageable, students are also more confident to read/interpret the poem/prose subsequently when they see their responses to previous activities validated by the teacher during class discussion. Once the students have read the Unseen once or twice individually, it would then be broken down into manageable, bite-sized portions for close-reading and group discussion (with guiding questions from the teacher).

Teaching Unseen Poetry

I started teaching my very first very first upper secondary Literature class this year, and it’s been an interesting experience so far. I started the year with unseen poetry, and I used many pictures and advertisements to get students to think about what it means to be able to think critically. We broke down into smaller bites the meanings (and hidden meanings) of different advertisements, and then students had to look for one advertisement of their own and do a critical analysis of it as an assignment.

For poetry, I used a number of songs to teach the different devices – “End of the World” and “Firework” were used to teach sound devices and imagery respectively. I tried my best to break it down so that students were able to understand how the devices worked at their most basic then link it to effect and poet’s intention. From the song/picture/sound, I would move on to lines/stanzas, then to full poems. Students were able to follow and have a better grasp of the concept this way. I really hope that through this course I would learn skills and strategies to enhance my students’ learning and to make Literature meaningful for them.

teaching the unseen

I am teaching a Sec 3 class this year. I've not really covered much of the unseen last term as we were more focussed on hitting the ground running with the set text. The few unseen lessons I had with my class were discussions-based. I would give hard copies of selected poems and get students to think and contribute points, bouncing off ideas from one another. It helps greatly that there are only 11 students in my class and most of them are responsive and enthusiastic about lit. I have used songs and videos related to the poem or theme of the poem to activate schema for students. With regard to content knowledge of literary devices and elements of poetry, i tend to do a bit of explicit teaching with examples before letting them apply the skills on their own.

Unseen in Peicai Secondary

I am quite fortunate (unfortunate?) to have only 4 combined Lit students and 1 Pure Lit student in my class. Having a small class means I can actually spend undivided attention on them and it also means that I have to prepare a lot for that 5 students. I can't really do groupwork as I always end up having one group only. Like Dr Whitehead, I used pictures and advertisements to teach them to think critically and bring up the point that things (words) exist for a reason. The assessment is that they have to use the literary devices, such as diction, alliteration to create a commerical on their own. Hence, students can apply the literary devices that they learnt. Next, I get the students to think of a theme, and they have to cut pictures that suit their themes. For example, the theme could be on growing up and the relevant pictures are paths, friends, angles, candles etc. One of the Themes can be on peace. Colour blue, dove can be used to signify peace. This year, I will also be asking students to craft their own Literature questions. A poem or prose is given to the students and they have to craft their questions. The questions can be on themes, characters, the techniques etc. They have to come out with the answer key too. students can be independent in their learning and have higher order thinking skills. After this exercise, Students will (hopefully) pay more attention to the requirement of the question and know what entails a satisfactory answer.

Teaching Unseen Prose

When I started teaching Upper Secondary Literature two years ago, I was unsure how best to approach the Unseen in an fun, engaging and meaningful manner. I wanted to move on to activities and learning tasks, besides just pen and paper exercise, to stimulate my students' thinking and learning. More importantly, I wanted to adequately prepare my students for formal assessments in the Unseen section of the Literature assessments especially the at the 'O' Level. With suggestions and hand-holding from my very experienced colleagues, I have managed to create learning tasks that my students apparently have enjoyed and done well so far. One of the approaches was to get students to select songs they like and do a literary analysis on each of them. When students presented their analysis, they had to orally defend their assertions when their peers questioned them in class. My colleagues also looked at music videos and got their students to do real-time online discussion with the teachers. A lot of the work we have been doing centers around group and class discussions on print and non-print materials. What has really helped for me as a new Literature teacher has been the generous sharing of resources as well as ideas in the department.

Teaching and Assessing the Unseen_Norani Hasan, PRCS

Just like Shelia, I am also from Pasir Ris Crest Secondary. Most of the current Sec 4 teachers in my school taught the unseen using the SPECS and SLIM which was mentioned in Shelia's post as an introduction to the unseen. I also find the textbook (`Mining for Meaning') which we are using really helpful not so much because I like the practice it provides the students but more because the students feel more `secure' that they actually have something to refer to. I usually like to teach the unseen by giving students various examples of texts which share the same theme. For example, I started off one of my earliest lessons on unseen poetry using Burns' `A red red Rose' because it is one of my favourite and perhaps its because I feel it is easier for my students to pick out the different literary features in the poem eg. rhyming pattern, use of hyperbole, symbolism. I then let them move on to Blake's `The Sick Rose' and let them try to compare and contrast the 2 poems in terms of meaning and literary devices used. To close the series of lessons on unseen poetry, I then showed them West Life's rendition of`The Rose' on youtube. However, so far I have not assessed my students formally as their assignments were mostly formative ones. Also because in Term 1 the Sec 4 teachers mostly concentrated on trying to cover as much ground for our short stories and have postponed the teaching of the unseen to Term 2. Thus, I feel this course that I am doing right now will help me gain more ideas on how to make teaching of the unseen more exciting and relevant to my students.

Teaching Unseen (NHHS)

Hi all I have not been teaching the unseen for the past 3 years as I am only teaching the set text for the time being. This is what I remember about teaching the unseen: I believe students need help, especially in the initial stages, to activate schema and spark off their analytical skills. The first unseen lesson, I showed the students a picture of the painting 'St George and the Dragon' by Uccello. We considered the two characters in the painting and raised questions about them. Following that we used 'Not my best side' by Fanthorpe, which is based on that painting, to explore characterisation and point of view. I remember that lesson because the students were engaged and intrigued by the unexpected version of the story in the poem. From there I would at times use pictures/photographs to activate schema or start discussions. I also tried my best to use excerpts from texts of different genre and cultures (incl Singaporean literature) to expose students to various types of writing and perspectives. Lastly, I feel that once the core skills are taught, students should be exposed to many types of questions and have sufficient timed practice

Unseen in FTP

I just transferred to the school in Jan 2011, and it is also my first time teaching Literature after 6.5 years in the service. So everything is relatively new to me. I started of the year teaching unseen at Sec 2 but it is poetry. At first I teach them the skills such as identifying similes and metaphors and the effect and then I started to expose them to more poems so they can practice what they have learnt last year and this year. I had even used songs to teach rhyme and rythm. They had fun when I use funny poems and songs to teach. What my HOD wants to see apart from understanding the skills, is personal response. So, usually I will have at least 1 or 2 open ended questions for the students to answer after analysing the poems.

Teaching the Unseen in Bukit View Sec

One of the main aims is to ensure that the students enjoy poetry and prose so that barriers towards the Unseen are broken down. Texts selected will be varied with themes of war, love, teenage years and even urbanization. Besides hard copies of texts, some material(for poetry) is also garnered from the Youtube- with lyrics of songs by Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel. Lyrics are shown without music initially. Discussion follows on how the writer crafts his words to his purpose via imagery, rhyme, beat etc. For the prose section, texts from various short stories, novels and past years’ school papers are chosen to highlight the writer’s use of suspense, contrast, tension, and how the dialogue in the text helps us to form the character. One problem we face is that the O level Elective Lit results do not state how students actually scored in the Lit paper or the Social Studies component.

Teaching and Assessing Unseen Prose_Divya

Frankly I thought using adverts as a starting point to teach The Unseen is a brilliant approach. I personally find that my students have a problem developing opinions and have an even harder time expressing their opinions. Some are handicapped by the lack of vocabulary and some even write awkward sentences so their opinions literally get "lost in translation". I ususally get them to watch video clips about thought provoking concepts such as euthanasia, the holocaust and such which would wrench an emotion or two out of them. They would need to be provided with exercises and activities that would merely require them to circle appropriate adjectives to describe character, feelings, moods etc. The next step was looking for evidence for their choice of adjective and so on. I felt that this step had to be done before they moved on to tackle poetry and prose proper. Poetry is handled by (1) close analysis by way of a thorough study of the diction, language , form, rhythm etc (2) Responding by way of expressing the kind of mood & feeling the poem evokes etc. Prose always seems a littel easier because the structure is pretty standard - When i teach close reading, the focus would be on character study, tone of text - author's intention, Literary devices etc. & of course practising these skills on past year exam papers ; / Divya Raman

Reflection on the Teaching of Unseen Prose

Currently, I am teaching Sec 1 Language Arts. Prior to this, I have only taught English Language and have no experience teaching Literature. For Sec 1 LA, the students have not been taught unseen prose yet. If I were to teach unseen prose, I would probably start by getting my students to be familiar with the literary terms such as characterisation, plot, theme and etc. Following that, the students can be guided to identify and annotate the elements as well as the use of the literary devices in given texts. Samples with annotation and model essays will be given to students to guide them in their learning process. The students will also be taught to structures to adopt when writing their essays.

Teaching the Unseen BPGH

Hi All!! I am a beginning teacher in Bukit Panjang Government High School. I taught unseen poetry last year to my Sec 3s. One of the things I tell my students (not to sound morbid) is that doing unseen poetry is like doing an autopsy. You need to observe the details in the poem. To get them started I expose the students to unusual ads or music videos to get the students to be more aware of the details in the visuals and the impact on the readers. I explain to my students that poetry is similiar to pictures and movie clips except that they are in words. I usually ask the students to pick up words that stand out as they first glance through it. I then ask them why they think the words stood out to them. And usually the students find that the words that stood out to them play a crucial part in answering the questions that are being asked.

In my opinion, I feel that students are not exposed or more rightly put, they do not question what they see or read. My approach is to get them to notice details and ask questions in order to generate answers and higher order thinking.

Reflection on teaching unseen prose

I teach Language Arts instead of Litearature in my school. Unseen prose constitutes only one part of the programme. There are not many opportunities to teach unseen prose and so far, two unseen prose lessons were taught by me. In one lesson, students were taught how to identify character traits based on a set text (To Kill A Mocking Bird); thereafter, they applied the same set of skills on an unseen text. The students were expected to articulate their interpretations and justify how they derived the interpretations. In another lesson, the students were required to analyse the setting of a short story to explain how it created a sense of fear in the story. I guided the students step-by-step in unpacking the various setting of the story to see how the sense of fear was created. In both lessons, the students were given opportunities to share their work and this had allowed the class to see things from different perspectives. In the second lesson, the students generally did not address the question directly - many found it difficult to explain how the setting created the sense of fear.

Teaching the Unseen in PRCS

Hi all, In Pasir Ris Crest Sec, we start the students off with the acronym: SPECS & SLIMS. (Subject Matter-Point of View-Characterisation-Style: Structure-Language-Imagery-Movement (Rhythm)-Symbolism). We also refer closely to 'Mining for Meaning', and get the students to attempt the questions in the book itself. Our teachers frequently employ the use of video clips & even songs to get the students interested in the unseen. One of the biggest challenge we face in PRCS is to instill the importance of the subject itself as quite a handful of the students feel 'forced' to take Literature (which is a compulsory subject, except for the Normal Technical and lower-end Normal Academic classes). -Shelia- (Pasir Ris Crest)

Teaching the Unseen Prose

For our school, we try to build upon the literary skills and strategies of close analysis that students have been familiarized with in the lower secondary syllabus. For example, we still focus on characterization and how a character may be depicted through his appearance, actions and words. This allows us to spiral up the level of difficulty, while still providing scaffolding for students through emphasizing the core skills needed for literary analysis. Prose texts from both 'Mining for Meaning' as well as 'Mastering the Unseen' are used as part of teaching unseen prose. Other than that, we did touch upon the generic features of texts -- tragic, comic -- as well as the use of irony. In teaching the unseen texts, we place emphasis on how students have make judicial use of evidence to support their inferences and arguments. We thus get students to highlight particular parts of a text and to explain/justify why that text is tragic or ironic.

Teaching the Unseen

I have used short film. Students view a short film then discuss the devices found within the film and how they contribute to atmosphere: mood and tone, plot, themes and even characterisation. Once they finish their discussion on how visual and auditory cues found within the film contribute to uncovering the nuances of meaning within the film, we then start on a discussion of a prose passage.