For the past 3 months, upon attending and reading a ‘bagful’ -one heavy load of MELTA free red bag- of suggested materials useful for Young Adult Literature, I definitely gained a lot of insight into how to go about teaching a literature class. I am now more equipped and really for it.Previously, it was so irony to teach something you don’t like but to get students to like it. As the teacher teaching the subject, I have got to like it first, I guess now I do.
Come to think of the EDU 5276 class ….it was really funny to get comments for my old fashioned style or idea of teaching. It didn’t cross my mind before this that something like getting the students to do prediction based on the book cover and start class with some vocabularies are old ideas – already stale! No wonder it didn’t work well in my class But that was how we were taught in our TESL class -shy to say- many years ago!
Another funny thing was that, when presenting our group assignment on ‘Dual media teaching apparatus’ where we have to think of two media to use for our literature class. being not so teenage any more , some of us did choose teenagers’ favourite songs but our lecturer didn’t think it was appropriate and we were not allowed to justify for the so-called wrong choice of song. The songs were indeed teenagers’ favourite songs when we were teenagers! Students nowadays have never heard of ‘Jimmy don’t cry’ or Sir Paul McCartney name. Lucky for me, it was a group work where my much younger group members opposed to my choice of song, or else, the class will be laughing at my classic choice from Sir Cliff Richard ‘Son, be a bachelor boy’ to go along with the ‘Beethoven in Paradise’ issue of father’s expectation vs son’s interest!
Lesson that we gained here is that – use materials (be it books or anything) that interest the students – ask them – NOT those which interest us – let us teach what they like, so as to get their full attention for a successful teaching and learning to take place.
The idea of writing on line reflections ,is also great. Something new that I’m going to implement to my class. I hope I’ll manage to find time to respond, at least briefly to their reflections, as I always do to my students’ journal exercise books. Actually, I was hoping, at the beginning, that my lecturer would respond to my cyber writing but I guess he got so many important things to do which is impossible to respond to his hundreds of students-in and out campus. I understand. But in my case, where I don’t have that many students, I’ll try to respond to my students. I guess my students would love to have the teacher visiting their blogs and see how creative they are.
By writing reflections, students will memorize more what they have learnt because they have to put it in writing. This is how I learnt and managed to cover my Brown & Stephen book- write upon completing reading every topic.
I really learn a lot from this course. The important aspects of readers involvement – initiating, sharing, connecting and internalizing. How to cater to the different types of readers. The bibliotherapy thing which I have never heard of before and not recognize by this computer as something that exists – the red underline is always there!.
I’m glad this subject is not an elective subject or else, I wouldn’t have chosen it because all this while I was full with anxiety and hatred to teach literature. Glad those feelings have vanished. Thanks to EDU 5276.
