[etni] Fwd: Teaching Literature for lit Exam
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- Date: Sat, 4 Jan 2014 20:41:25 +0200
From: Avi Granit <judiavi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Teaching Literature for lit Exam
Dear ETNI community and Renee
Felt like I had to express an opinion after reading Renee's note below.
While I understand her issues about teaching the HOTS, I am less convinced
of their importance on the actual exam as there only 2 HOTS questions and
there are still alternative question options as far as I know. I am also
surprised with some of her other objections concerning teaching literature
and tips for teachers. We have always taught literature and the only problem
in the past was trying to prove the "legitimacy" of it to our students who
could not see the point in learning for anything that was not on the bagrut.
Teaching literature does not mean you have no time for anything else - far
from it, the issues and background to the settings and dilemas of many of
the literature pieces provide freedom to explore and "make connections"
(pardon my HOTS) to many issues moral and current that can always be related
to holidays and special events.
In our school, the students cover the literature from yod and take the
literature module at the end of yod-alef. This is our 3rd year of doing
this and while, sadly, there is no official research on it, most of our
teachers have found a "knock-on" effect, seeing a marked improvement in the
students' writing abilities in yod-bet as a direct result of all the writing
assignments they practiced and worked on while learning for the literature
program.
Yes, the tests take longer to grade however, I disagree about the amount of
time it takes to prepare questions. Personally, making up long grammar
excercises or vocabulary fill-ins takes me much longer than thinking up good
questions for literature. Not to mention the fact that it gives our English
team at school a wonderful opportunity to collaborate on writing the
"matkonot" together; a good experience for all of us.
As for Renee's tips for teaching: "Forget about teaching
English...........if you teach the lit program........" Is Renee saying that
teaching literature is NOT teaching English?? I guess I am quite baffled by
that point. I have always believed that teaching English literature is
teaching English? If her students find it hard to listen to a text or
teacher or read independently for more than 15 minutes - surely this would
be the same challenge no matter whether she is teaching literature, grammar,
vocabulary or Jewish holidays or whatever? As for using videos - I'm not
sure whether that was suggested as a substitute for reading or as an extra?
Obviously, it is totally silly to think that watching a movie is a
substitute for reading a text. Learning English is all about interacting
with the words and language itself which means they need to read, interpret
and analyze the text itself. (If it were ONLY about the "story" line and
not about learning English we could just bring Hebrew translations of the
literature pieces - forget the English!!!) However, comparing the written
text of any literature piece to its representation as a movie on video is a
very valuable and educational excercise so I agree that showing videos to
students AFTER they have dealt with the original text is a great idea.
I intend absolutely no disrespect to Renee - perhaps she has been teaching
4 point students which is why she has found the whole experience more
challenging and less valid? Admittedly, I have only taught the program to 5
point students and have found it to be perfectly suited to my students'
abilities and needs. In fact, I would like to go ON RECORD in support of
the exam as for the first time in my long career of more than 20 years I am
finally seeing a DIRECT CORRELATION between the amount of effort a student
makes and his or her grades. Those native or near native students who
arrogantly assume that they do not need to study have little advantage with
the literature program and in contrast, it is WONDERFUL to see those
hard-working kids who may have less natural foreign language abilities
succeed by virtue of their diligence.
I am convinced that if our students were given a general English test
checking their vocabulary and grammar before embarking on the lit program
and then after, we would see an improvement for sure. Certainly not less
improvement than if they had followed a non-literature based course. Hey,
anyone out there looking for a subject for their M.Ed??
Judi G.
renee wroe:
> First of all I'll register my VERY strong objection to the Lit test in
> general.
> I believe that teaching HOTS in English is NOT our job.
> The students are NOT learning thinking skills, except if you want to call
> how to answer exam questions thinking skills (by the way, more useful that
> what we claim to be teaching them, which if they haven't worked out for
> themselves by grade 11, is never going to be learned).
> I believe the Lit exam should be dropped (That would free Ministry budgets
> of millions -teaching hours, developing tests, testing, books and put that
> money to good in reducing class size, etc). If you want to test Lit, do
> it with one question on the D or G exam instead of the composition.
> The Lit program is taking up all of my class time and I am not able to
> teach
> anything else (the kids won't let me even if I try) in the 11th & 12th
> grades. No holiday or special events material, no interesting articles,
> no
> values, etc. Just to make things plain, I teach very intelligent and
> ambitious 5 pointers. How you 4 point teachers manage is a bad fairy
> tale.
> The Lit program is taking up all of my preparation time. It takes forever
> to prepare a Matkoet (unless you give them the questions or tests right
> out
> of the lit program books or previous exams, to which they learn the
> answers
> by rote). It has taken me more than 12 hours to correct and comment on
> the
> exams of my 25 12th graders. My 11th graders are doing the log, checking
> of
> which keeps me (and them) constantly busy for 2 years.
> Here are my tips:
>
> 1. Tell the kids not to learn the answers by heart. The questions
> will
> be different and the answers won't fit (no brainer, but that's what they
> do.
> They think one size fits all)
>
> 2. Tell them to prefer any HOTS over Inferring, which is the hardest
> HOTS to prove.
>
> 3. Mark the key words (and especially the PLURAL S) in each question:
> AND, TWO, WHY, WHO. They get so carried away finding and writing about an
> example that they forget to add the second example the question is calling
> for.
>
> 4. There is no time to go back over the answers to correct mistakes
> in
> grammar. I tell my students to start by marking the question, then write
> notes as to content & examples in the margin (can be in Hebrew), and only
> then to compose their answer in English very slowly, checking subject/verb
> agreement, tense, a/an/the, capital letters, conditional, etc as they
> write.
>
> 5. Setting = time + place Any question about setting must include
> answers for each part.
>
> 6. Learn key words to use in your answers. Conflict, dilemma,
> values,
> ethics, moral dilemma, etc.
>
>
>
> Tips for teachers:
>
> 1. Forget about teaching English in grades 11 and 12 if you teach the
> lit program as instructed.
>
> 2. If you want to have time to teach English, just teach them how to
> answer HOTS questions, tell the kids to watch the movies on YouTube or on
> video (80% of my kids won't read at home and won't listen in class for
> more
> than 15 minutes if you read to them or they read to each other), and MAYBE
> discuss in class.
>
> 3. If you're doing the LOG, let them start the work in class, when the
> period is over and they've written only 2 lines, let them finish the work
> at
> home or with their private teachers. Don't make the mistake of checking
> their work from time to time. According to the instructions, you need to
> grade only ONE task, the Summative Assessment and check that all tasks are
> included.
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