Literature Lesson
2
A successful class of Englih I do not know exactly if this is the best class of English I have ever had, but it was quite successful to me because of various factors. As far as I remember, I was in the 11 th grade, back in highschool. The lesson was about the play “The Crucible” written by Arthur Miller. We had to split into groups of 5-6 students and invent a story similar to the trial from the book, but adapted to the present day scandals, news and characters. I remember that in a previous lesson we had disscussed briefly about the play, about its major themes, motifs, plot or characters. It was a rule that everytime we passed to a new lesson with a fragment from a literary work, everyone had to read that book entirely. At first, most of us whined a little, but we got used to it. The good part was that the teacher allowed us to read the Romanian version of some book if we could find it, in order to speed up the reading process. So, in that day, the teacher made a short recap of the previous class and then pointed out the rules of thi activity, and each scene was supposed to last 10 minutes maximum. It was a good thing doing this, because it was easier for us to keep in mind what we had to point out in our presentations; namely, to underline the themes and traits of the characters through exaggeration sometimes, to write them on the black board and not divagate too much from the topic. We had about 5-7 minutes to organise ourselves and our speeches, because we were not allowed to read the script all the time. This made the activity quite challenging. The good part was that the teacher did not interrupt us to make corrections and helped everyone who was stuck at some point because of stage fright, hardness in expressing ourselves or nervousity. Thus the students gained more self confidence and the activity continued uninterrupted. The funny part of this was that we could also sing if it was the case and that the rest of the class could intervene and change the setting of the scene; for instance, the trial of my group took place in a sauna and we had to adapt out of the hand the story according to this situation.
description
Literature Lesson
Transcript of Literature Lesson
A successful class of Englih
I do not know exactly if this is the best class of English I have ever had, but it was quite successful to me because of various factors.
As far as I remember, I was in the 11th grade, back in highschool. The lesson was about the play The Crucible written by Arthur Miller. We had to split into groups of 5-6 students and invent a story similar to the trial from the book, but adapted to the present day scandals, news and characters. I remember that in a previous lesson we had disscussed briefly about the play, about its major themes, motifs, plot or characters. It was a rule that everytime we passed to a new lesson with a fragment from a literary work, everyone had to read that book entirely. At first, most of us whined a little, but we got used to it. The good part was that the teacher allowed us to read the Romanian version of some book if we could find it, in order to speed up the reading process.
So, in that day, the teacher made a short recap of the previous class and then pointed out the rules of thi activity, and each scene was supposed to last 10 minutes maximum. It was a good thing doing this, because it was easier for us to keep in mind what we had to point out in our presentations; namely, to underline the themes and traits of the characters through exaggeration sometimes, to write them on the black board and not divagate too much from the topic. We had about 5-7 minutes to organise ourselves and our speeches, because we were not allowed to read the script all the time. This made the activity quite challenging. The good part was that the teacher did not interrupt us to make corrections and helped everyone who was stuck at some point because of stage fright, hardness in expressing ourselves or nervousity. Thus the students gained more self confidence and the activity continued uninterrupted. The funny part of this was that we could also sing if it was the case and that the rest of the class could intervene and change the setting of the scene; for instance, the trial of my group took place in a sauna and we had to adapt out of the hand the story according to this situation.After each presentation, the teacher asked the class, including the members involved in that presentation, to point out the strong points and the weak ones for every student of that group. Of course that after each evaluation of this type, the next groups managed to avoid the mistakes and focus better on the goals of the activity.Everyone enjoyed that active class of English and got a good mark that day. Then, in the last 5 minutes, we discussed about the themes and characters and as homework we had to write a one or two page essay based on that topic, but applied on a present day situation.
In my opinion, the activity from that class of English was a good opportunity to evaluate ourselves, too see what mistakes had been made and how they could be improved in the future. And also, it was a good and active way of analizing the play.
