edu3234- using songs to teach literary text

On 15 October 2009, my group presented our assigned task which is using songs to teach literary text. We have spent quite a few days to search and discuss for this topic. We have presented a text by Hillary Tham entitled ‘Offerings’ and we choose an evergreen song as well. ‘The One I gave My Heart to’ is the title of the song. It was sung by the late Aaliyah in 1997.
To my surprise, two groups have chosen the same songs and with the same literary texts. However, I found their choices amazing as this song really fits the storyline of ‘Cinderella Girl’. I realized that many of my classmates enjoy their time in this class as they are up-to-date to new great songs. Songs is a good choice when the students lose interest in the classroom. They may listen to the songs and sing along if they want to. Sometimes song depicts reality in life thus this is a good opportunity for teachers to instil moral values to the lesson that they taught.
In the activities provided by us, we stated that songs can be used at the set induction stage in which the students are instructed to listen to the song and underline specific info that the teachers will further explained in the next stage. The next activity that we suggested is find picture or captures a few photos that describe relationship. The students will then be asked to come up with a tagline for their photos.

edu3234 jigsaw reading

On 8 October 2009, I learnt jigsaw reading. Actually, I am quite puzzled with the name itself since I have never done activity like this before. I thought that this activity is like organizing sentences into the correct order but actually it is not. The whole class was given a speech by Malcolm X and I noticed that every page of the speech has been alphabetically ordered. I choose the front page of the speech that had alphabet “A” written on top of it. I felt grateful that I made a good choice as I well understood the whole content of my part. I heard complaints by my fellow friends that they did not understand what the text is all about. Some of them confused with the storyline because they said that they did not know what happened before that contributed to the consequent actions in the pages that they read.

Our task started when we were asked to gather in groups who had the same alphabet in their pages. In the assigned group, we had to note down the names of people and places mentioned and also search for the issues that Malcolm raised in his speech. After that, we came back to our groups and explained the result of our discussion. Miss Dzeelfa then told us to identify six elements in the speech which are purpose, key message, speaker’s point of view, tone, characteristics and other elements that we think interesting or our own personal opinions.

Our class ended after Miss Dzeelfa concluded the lesson by explaining the benefits and shortcomings of using jigsaw reading in the classroom. She told us that jigsaw reading can be used in class at any size or instruction by teachers of all teaching abilities. So, I will consider this activity to be included in my lesson plan in the future as i agreed with Miss Dzeelfa’s explanation that jigsaw reading can ease the burdens of the students from having to read the texts from beginning until the end. This will definitely makes the students overwhelmed with the lengthy speeches.