English Language Education Section
Curriculum and Assessment Planning at Senior Secondary Level An Annotated Exemplar for Literature in English
Introduction
• This exemplar focusses on how a girls’ school plans and implements its school-based curriculum and assessment for Literature in English at senior secondary level. It highlights the school’s effective practices in developing students’ independent literary response and critical analysis through designing and implementing:
a progressive and flexible school-based curriculum;
learning and teaching activities that suitably cater for students’ needs and abilities; and
strategies aimed at promoting assessment for learning as well as assessment of learning.
School Background
• The school is a girls’ school adopting English as the medium of instruction.
• Literature in English has been offered in the school from S1 upwards for many years. At present, there is one HKDSE Literature in English class in each of S4 and S5, with around 30 students in each class.
• Students are generally good at English, particularly at speaking. Nonetheless, there is still a certain degree of diversity in terms of student abilities in the Literature class, which consists of more advanced students who rank top few in the form as well as less advanced ones who rank bottom few.
Curriculum Planning and Implementation
Taking into consideration their own context and needs, the following strategies were adopted in planning and implementing the curriculum for Literature in English in this school:
Feature Strategy
Curriculum Planning
• A progressive and well-focussed three-year curriculum had been developed:
At S4, the curriculum emphasised exposure to literary concepts, e.g. genre, characterisation and theme, as well as a range of literary forms including short stories, novels and poems. Students were engaged in various short creative learning tasks that elicited personal response and encouraged reflection.
Considerations: Students at this stage generally lacked a firm grasp of literary terms and concepts for making critical judgement and in-depth analysis of literary texts even though they had been provided with some exposure to literary texts and opportunities for expressing personal responses at junior secondary level. Thus, in planning the senior secondary Literature curriculum, attention was especially given to building a solid foundation by fostering such abilities in S4 and providing opportunities for application in S5 and S6.
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← The school aptly places emphasis on concept building at the beginning of the three-year course, with the aim of introducing students to literary terms and devices that will enable them to examine and discuss literary works. Assigning students suitably challenging learning tasks
At S5, the curriculum focussed on experiencing literary texts, e.g.
the set film The Painted Veil and the set play Othello, through activities such as role play or movie shooting.
In addition to the genres taught in S4, film and drama were introduced.
Students were encouraged to express their ideas and views through activities such as writing reviews and essays.
For S6, teachers plan to consolidate the literary knowledge and skills that students have previously acquired. The remaining set texts will be covered and students will be challenged to do text comparison and contrast as well as portfolio work.
• The design of the curriculum was flexible, allowing adjustments to be made to enhance learning and teaching where necessary.
For instance, it was originally intended that the S4 curriculum would cover most of the short stories as they were deemed easier to handle due to their shorter length. However, on realising that some of the stories, though short, were highly complex in terms of language and subject matter, a number of them were postponed to S5 or S6. The novel which was originally planned for S5 and S6 was taught earlier instead.
ensures that they gain motivation and enjoyment through working on the tasks.
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← In selecting the literary genres to be covered, it is important to take into consideration students’ interests and prior experience.
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← At S5, students are given opportunities to apply their understanding of literary concepts as well as their knowledge of the features of different genres in interpreting texts. The visual elements of literary works are introduced through appreciation of film and drama. Students are encouraged to exercise their creative imagination and make informed and critical judgement through close interaction with the texts.
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← The curriculum of the last year of study allows students to consolidate their learning and helps prepare them for the HKDSE exam. Further opportunities are provided for students to apply their literary knowledge and skills through making critical analysis and cross-text comparison, as well as producing their own literary work.
Considerations: Teachers were aware that this was the first time the curriculum was implemented and hence there might be unanticipated difficulties arising. The curriculum was therefore made as flexible as possible so that adjustments could be made where necessary.
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← The school’s flexible and easily adaptable curriculum enables the teachers to adjust their teaching strategies and pace in response to students’ needs and readiness.
It also allows them to exercise their professional judgement to adapt the schemes of work in order to maximise learning effectiveness.
Learning and teaching
• A diversity of learning contexts and activities were developed to motivate students of varied interests and enable them to
Considerations: Even though the class had good language proficiency in general, there was, nonetheless, some learner diversity in terms of language abilities, prior knowledge,
explore, develop and apply their literary knowledge and skills.
For instance, to help students understand the tension and atmosphere in the story ‘The Lottery’, students took part in a role play in which they experienced the horror of human sacrifice. The activity was motivating for students as they were keen on doing drama activities and as they came to recognise the implications of the plot while acting it out. In other lessons, students were given the opportunity to demonstrate their literary knowledge and creativity through artwork (Appendix 1) or short creative writing tasks, involving peer review (Appendix 2).
• Scaffolding activities were conducted to provide support for students, particularly the less advanced ones, in understanding and appreciating literary texts.
For instance, before students read
‘Seventeen Syllables’, a short story about the life of a middle-aged woman, a pre-reading activity (Appendix 3) that encouraged students to think from a middle-aged woman’s perspective was conducted, and background information on the experience of Japanese immigrants in America was introduced to students.
• Open-ended activities that allowed students to produce works with varied length and complexity were included.
For example, in asking students to set a quiz for their classmates to assess their understanding of a particular text, no specific requirements on the format or content of the quiz were set.
Students were free to design any task that they deemed suitable (see examples in Appendices 4a and 4b).
They then attempted the tasks developed by other students and provided feedback on classmates’
responses to their own questions (Appendix 5).
interests and learning styles in the Literature class. Teachers also felt that some themes and ideas explored in the literary texts were culturally specific or beyond the experience of the students, which made comprehension difficult for them. For example, few students in Hong Kong would associate the idea of lottery with the brutal practice of drawing lots to select a person for stoning to death, as portrayed in the story ‘The Lottery’.
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← This serves not only to cater for learner diversity but also provide opportunities for students to develop and apply literature knowledge and skills through a range of purposeful, enjoyable and manageable activities which help to stimulate interest and provide motivation.
Considerations: Students’ understanding of literary texts was often hindered by the subtlety of their subject matter or their cultural background.
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← Prompting students to project themselves into situations similar to those in the texts and increasing students’ world knowledge help to ensure that they approach the texts with the necessary background knowledge and appropriate mental set.
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← Such activities ensure that students are suitably challenged. While the more advanced students are stretched through producing questions and answers as well as providing feedback that demonstrate their creativity and depth of understanding of the text, the less advanced students gain confidence and satisfaction from developing a simpler task made up of less complex questions and from assessing others’ work.
Reflective questions:
• What are the key considerations in the planning of your school-based curriculum for Literature in English? How do you decide when to teach certain texts?
• Have you allowed time for motivating your students and helping them build their knowledge foundation? Do you allocate time for the consolidation of knowledge and skills?
• Do you conduct a variety of learning tasks and activities to motivate your students and cater for their varied interests, abilities and needs?
• Do you provide sufficient support to help your students understand the texts?
Assessment Planning and Implementation
Taking into consideration their own context and needs, the following strategies were adopted in planning and implementing the assessment for Literature in English in this school:
Feature Strategy
Assessment for Learning
• Where appropriate, opportunities for peer learning and support were built into some of the learning activities.
For instance, in one activity (on
‘Seventeen Syllables’), students were invited to respond to their classmates’
work by giving written feedback (Appendix 5), or in another activity (on the poem ‘This Lunar Beauty’), they invited their classmates to provide them with answers to questions that they had in relation to the text (Appendix 6).
• A range of formative assessment tasks, e.g. role play, writing task and movie shooting, were used to inform learning and teaching.
Achievements made by students in the assessment tasks were acknowledged and suggestions for improvement were made by the teacher (Appendix 7). A follow-up discussion was also conducted in class after each task to conclude students’ strengths and weaknesses as well as to summarise and consolidate what students had learnt.
Assessment of Learning
• The requirements of the internal examinations were set to align with students’ learning progress within the three-year curriculum.
In the first term of S4, students were assessed on their knowledge of literary concepts and their ability to apply it in giving responses to texts.
Considerations: Students had the mistaken notion that there was only one single interpretation to a literary text and were inclined to regard their teacher’s explanation as ‘definitive’. They were unaware that they could make their own interpretive responses.
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← This facilitates interaction and mutual support among students and allows them to gain insights from each other’s ideas and views. It also enables them to recognise that their own interpretation may be just as sound as, or even more creative than, their teacher’s.
Considerations: As the class was diverse in interests and talents, different formative assessment tasks were used to encourage learning as well as to allow students to demonstrate their abilities.
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← Timely and constructive feedback from the teacher helps to enhance learning effectiveness. While suggestions for improvement given by the teacher encourage students to evaluate and reflect on their own learning and allow them to understand their own strengths and weaknesses, compliments and encouragement from the teacher help to sustain their momentum in learning.
Considerations: Teachers firmly believed that students should be assessed on what they had been taught as substantial time during the academic year had been devoted to covering specific learning focuses, e.g. enhancing students’ understanding of literary terms and concepts.
They were then required to do more critical text analysis in the second term of S4, and text comparison in S5 (Appendix 8). In both years, the texts assessed were those that had been covered in that particular year.
Students would only be assessed on all set texts in the mock exam in S6.
• The internal examinations were designed to gradually and progressively prepare students for the public exam in terms of duration and format.
For example, in the S4 mid-year exam, students were only required to work on one 3-hour paper that included both the appreciation and essay writing components (Appendix 9) while in the S4 final exam, they attempted two separate papers on appreciation and essay writing which lasted for 2.5 hours and 2 hours respectively (Appendix 10).
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← This ensures that students are assessed on what they have been taught and that there is a progression in terms of the level of difficulty of the assessments as they move on from one year level to the next.
Students also will not be demotivated by having to cope with questions that are overly challenging for them.
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← This helps to familiarise students with the public exam format without burdening them with any exam of a level of difficulty beyond their capability at the initial stage of the three-year course.
Reflective questions:
• Do you provide opportunities for your students to learn from each other?
• Do you provide timely and constructive feedback to help your students see their strengths and weaknesses in learning the subject?
• Do you ensure that students are assessed on what they have previously learnt?
• Do you progressively prepare your students for the public assessment?
Overall reflective questions:
• What have you learnt from the exemplar? Can the strategies described be applied in the planning of the school-based curriculum in your school? What would work or would not work? Why?
Learning Activity with Artwork
Appendix 1
Short Creative Writing Task
Appendix 2
The student applied what she had learnt about the language and style of poetry and gave very specific comments, e.g. used sense of sight, touch, personification, on her classmates’ work.
Students were asked to write a haiku in this activity.
Scaffolding Activity
Appendix 3
This is a pre-reading activity that encourages students to think from a middle-aged woman’s perspective so that they could better understand the thinking and feelings of the main character of a short story who is about the same age.
Open-ended Activity – Designing a Quiz (I) Less Advanced
Appendix 4a
Simpler questions that are more factual in nature were developed by the less advanced students.
Open-ended Activity – Designing a Quiz (II) More Advanced
Appendix 4b
The more advanced students developed activities that required more reflection and critical analysis of the text.
Peer Feedback
Appendix 5
Encouragement as well as constructive feedback that guided their classmates to think more deeply were given by the student.
Peer Feedback (cont’d)
Appendix 5
Apart from acknowledging her classmate’s effort, the student encouraged her classmate to explore further the significance of haiku in the short story.
Giving Answers to Peer’s Questions
Appendix 6
Teacher’s Written Feedback
Appendix 7
Teacher’s Written Feedback (cont’d)
Appendix 7
Encouraging remarks as well as suggestions for improvement were given by the teacher.
For instance, the teacher complimented the student on the comprehensiveness of her essay while guiding her to reconsider how its structure and organisation could be improved.
Excerpts of exam papers S4 Mid-year Exam Literary concepts
S4 Final Exam Critical Analysis
S5 Mid-year exam Text Comparison
Appendix 8
S4 Mid-year Exam Format
Appendix 9
S4 Final Exam Format
Appendix 10
