Literature is studied only at lower secondary levels in First Toa Payoh Secondary School. In both secondary one and two, the students read the same text – “The Lightning God and other stories” by Catherine Lim. The secondary twos are currently reading “Father and Son”.
The method of instruction is mostly frontal (verbal) teaching with minimal worksheets and/or use of PowerPoint presentations. Students are expected to listen and respond based on what they can recall from reading the text and jot their notes into a notebook. The express class learns by thinking about general themes. Also they are taught to characterize characters in the stories through the use of the dramatic techniques of role-on-the-wall and freeze-frame. The normal academic students learn by answering comprehension style question, reviewing one-and-a-half to two pages of the text per lesson.
Students are assessed on their learning when they sit for their CAs and SAs. At intervals, students are tasked to write essays. From what I understand, there are two parts to each essay question with a total of 25 marks. However, the parts are not assigned fixed scores – a student is graded based on how much he/she writes in total for both questions instead of being graded based on each question.
Why the difference btwn the way the NA and Exp classes are taught?
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