Peicai Secondary School

School Culture – Peicai Secondary School

Peicai Secondary School is an average co-ed neighbourhood school that admits students from the three educational streams typical to Singapore, namely the Express, Normal Academic and Normal Technical streams. The intake of students however is not necessarily even as there are usually no more than 2 Express classes per level, which means that the majority of students are from the NA and NT stream. This particular student profile definitely has an impact on the way the school approaches teaching and learning as well as pupil development. Essentially, the management and school leaders do not push solely for academic performance but expend a great deal of time and energy on programmes and activities that can help develop students into well-rounded individuals with character and integrity. For its efforts, the school has been awarded the Character Education Award from MOE for three consecutive years.

With regards to academic side of things, the school adopts a Teaching For Understanding (TfU) framework, encouraging teachers to focus less on content and more on student understanding. In many ways, this is a practical approach towards teaching and learning as Peicaians tend to be rather resistant to content-heavy lessons, particularly when it is the teacher delivering the content. There are 2 key reasons why I think this is so. Firstly, many students do have problems with comprehension and expression, hence too much content-driven learning can be overwhelming for them. Secondly, the students tend to be rather unmotivated when it comes to their own learning, preferring instead to wait for answers for the Express students or to give up completely in the case of the NA/NT students. As such, to counter these problems, the school has worked in practical courses such as Cooking, Basic Business Skills and the like into their NT curriculum. The NA students as well as are offered subjects such as Computer Application and Elements of Business Skills in order to make their experience in school more relevant and engaging. On the flipside however, the curriculum for the Express students has not been the center of much change and innovation and it is up to the individual subject teachers to inject creativity into their classes.

My Attempt at Creativity/Creative Lessons

After the interviews and the many discussions we’ve had about creativity, I came to a sort of basic understanding of what I thought creativity meant, or should mean in the context of the Lit classroom. Essentially I saw it as encompassing two main threads –student engagement & stimulating students’ thinking. As such, I approached lesson planning thinking about how I could deliver the content in a creative way which would then naturally engage students and spur them towards thinking and reflecting upon the key ideas raised in class. This was idealistic and naïve of course as I had (unconsciously!) conflate the idea of creative delivery with student engagement and effective learning, as if it were a natural and continuous progression. As I have come to learn over the past 10 weeks, this is definitely not always the case because there are gaps and disconnects in this process that need to be thought through and addressed. Looking back at my practicum experience, there are 2 key points of reflection that I would like to highlight.

1. ‘Creative’ Lessons = Effective Lessons?

In my first week of actual teaching, I focused more on how to deliver the lesson content creatively and probably didn’t think through carefully enough why I was doing it, how I thought it would benefit students and what I wanted to achieve with it. For instance, in order to introduce the plot of Romeo & Juliet to my Sec 1 students, I wanted them to piece together the story using picture cards. I gave each pair a set of 20 picture cards, an A3 sized sheet of paper and a handheld sign that was red on one side and green on the other. The idea was that I would do a short trigger activity using the movie trailer of Gnomeo and Juliet and pick out key elements of the story with them. Following that, they would sequence the picture cards and paste it in order on the A3 paper. Once everyone was done, I would flash the pictures in the right order and students would show either the red side or the green side of their sign depending on whether they got the sequence right or wrong. At the very end, I would give students an interesting article that summed up the story of R&J in the style of a tabloid.

In my head, the lesson was creative because it had an element of the novel in it, it was engaging and interactive and it got students thinking about the story and the key plot elements without me feeding them the answers first. In retrospect, it might not have been the best way to introduce the story because the students would have been more confident and excited about the task had they already run through the summary of the story first. I was going for a more guiding discovery approach where they would analyse the picture cards to deduce the sequence of events but that turned out to be pretty challenging for the students and in the end, the red-and-green sign couldn’t be used in the vibrant way I had hoped because students didn’t really want to reveal that they had gotten the sequence wrong. That was when I realized that there was a disconnect between my ‘creative’ lesson and my understanding of the class. I had not properly grasped their ability and should have provided more guidance before giving them the task.

(Work in Progress!)

Creativity Study Case (Fuchun Secondary School)

School Background
Students in Fuchun Secondary School come from a variety of diverse backgrounds. This is exacerbated by the school's affiliation with its neighbouring Fuchun Primary School, which allows students with a low PSLE aggregate to find a place in the school. Thus, most students are already academically weak to begin with, though they may not necessarily be more fluent in their mother tongue languages. Students also face various problems in motivation, occasionally hampered by the school's focus on academic results, which sometimes makes for dry, dull lessons. Despite this, the school's staff are committed to producing engaging lessons in the hopes of allowing students to appreciate the subjects that they are taught, through the use of various programmes such as overseas trips, work attachments and learning journeys that take place during and out of school curriculum time. The bulk of the school's students make up the Normal(Academic) stream, though a cursory glance will tell any observer that there are just as many Normal (Academic) classes as Express classes. This is due to the smaller class sizes in the Express stream, and it shows that the school is willing to over-extend its resources to ensure that students stay engaged and motivated in the classroom.

The Teaching of Literature
Fuchun's Literature programme, I feel, suffers from an extreme lack of structure. This was apparent as I was planning my lessons, as I was, at times, blatantly oblivious to my end-of-year objectives. My lessons were mostly text-centred, and I covered portions of the text, based on what would be tested in the forthcoming tests. Therefore, I had a sketchy view, at best, of what technical devices my students would have been exposed to by the end of the year, and what they had to know in order to make the successful transition when they were promoted at the end of the year.

In the meantime, while students had the vaguest idea of devices, they did not know how to explain how these devices functioned, nor could they successfully utilize their knowledge of these devices in an academic essay. Students were also hampered by their limited vocabulary, and their lack of grammar sensitivity. There would be numerous errors in tenses, punctuation and sentence construction in their essays, which severely hampered the marker's ability to give them credit for points they were trying to make.

Definition of Creativity
The school adopts a more traditional view of creativity. The department, at the lower secondary levels, adopts simple creative lessons by getting students to write their own creative pieces as a means of engaging them in understanding the poetic devices that they have learnt. However, these creative pieces are rarely the centre of any assessment, but the means to an end. Time constraints, with the numerous class tests and examinations, present a real difficulty to weeding out periods for such exercises.

My Own Take on Creativity
I am more enamoured of Rachel Poh's (Ngee Ann Secondary) defining characteristic of creativity, that it should be a means to engage students in a text. As a result, I have tried by bringing props into class, or having group work where possible. I used props in the teaching of symbols by bringing in coins for students to reenact a scene from Ah Bah's Money, a short story in Catherine Lim's compendium of shorts, but it didn't pan out as students did not seem to perceive the importance of such an activity. The lesson was further hampered by class disruptions, which I had to address, thus working against the creative appeal of the lesson itself.

While the dramatic text that the Secondary Two students were studying provided ample room for re-enactment, I seldom had the time for such engagements.

Creativity Case Study (Temasek Junior College)

School Culture
Temasek Junior College (TJC) is a reputable school that takes in students of higher academic ability. There are 2 groups of students in TJC. They are the Temasek Academy (TA) students – those who enter the school via the Integrated Programme at Secondary 3 – and the Junior College (JC) students, those who enter the school after taking their O’ Levels. Students are hardworking and diligent, though slightly passive; many of them wait to be spoon-fed, or for the teachers to give them the answers, with students needing some probing before they give responses in class. The TA students however are noticeably more proactive and vocal than the others, perhaps because they have had more time in the school to build bonds with their peers and their teachers. Literature is only offered as a subject at TA3/4 or JC1/2 level; at TA1/2, Language Arts is offered as an amalgamation of English and Literature. That being said, because the approach to teaching Language Arts in TJC is inclined towards preparing students for General Paper, many students who decide to take Literature in TA3/4 are not particularly strong in the subject. In addition, there are students in JC1/2 who did not take Literature in Upper Secondary, but are taking the subject now, due to the requirement for students to take a contrasting subject (Arts or Science). These students tend to be the weakest of the lot.

Definition of Creativity
Creativity is an organic spirit of sensitivity, criticality and transitivity that is generally associated with interdisciplinary models of thinking, unique adaptations and original innovations. It is harnessed while being sensitive to and thinking critically of various perspectives, resulting in a tangible end product that draws connections and applicability across disciplines, mediums and fields of study.

Examples of Student-centred Creativity
The Literature department creates a climate of creativity that encourages student-centred creative products. The department exposes students to audio recordings of poetry recitals as well as def poetry videos to accompany the poems that are analysed in class, such as “Colourblind” and “Beethoven” respectively. In addition, students are given tasks that require them to come up with creative applications. Some of the products that students are required to come up with include crafting a poem with images to describe a colour of their choice to a blind person (Imagery Lesson), crafting a poem inspired by an artwork (Learning Journey to Singapore Art Museum), as well as demarcating line breaks in a poem that is presented to them in prose form and writing a reflection on why they have made the line breaks in that particular manner (Form Lesson). Students also had the opportunity to participate in poetry workshops conducted by Jacob Sam-La Rose, as well as create their own short comic strip on the characterisation of Richard based on Act 1 Scene 1 of Richard the Third.

Examples of Teacher-centred Creativity
The Literature department conducts lesson studies for the teaching of the poetry unit to JC1 students. The teachers come together to plan the poetry unit, sit in each other’s classes during the implementation period to observe the methodologies employed in teaching and learning, share feedback on what went well as well as AFIs, and lastly make changes for the next implementation cycle of the lesson study. This provides creative inputs to improve lesson delivery and student engagement. In addition, teacher-centred creativity is encouraged during events such as Lit Night – where the teachers perform – and poetry workshops – where teachers share a poem which they have crafted during the workshop.

Challenges of Infusing Creativity
With the school ultimately preparing students to sit for the A’ Levels, the syllabus and by extension time, poses a huge challenge to the infusion of creativity in the Literature classroom. With students having to read at least 2 set texts for each Literature paper, much time is devoted to the analysis of these texts, and it is impossible to ensure that every lesson is a creative lesson. Moreover, a creative lesson may not necessarily be an effective one as well, in terms of adequately preparing students for the exams. Perhaps the biggest challenge faced then is the prevailing culture of education in Singapore, where creativity and aesthetics is displaced by the need for pragmatic and economic results.