Housefull

I engaged 8C during the third period. We discussed the steps to write the appreciation of a poem using a chart. Various steps including introduction, summary, structure, literary devices and conclusion were explained. Learners were told the points to keep in mind while writing an appreciation and what makes an ideal appreciation. Later, the literary devices used in the poem 'Taj Mahal' were discussed. After giving a brief overview of various literary devices, learners were asked to identify instances of simile, metaphor, personfication etc. from the poem and write them down on the activity cards. For the first time since the beginning of my internship, all 44 learners were present.It got quite difficult to arrange them as four groups and the class management got a bit more difficult. After the completion of the task, the answers of the learners were read out and reinforced. The corrective feedbacks were also given to which the learners responded positively. I conducted a retest for the absentees of the previous classes as well.

I engaged 8C for another period in the afternoon. We started discussing We're the World co-authored by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie Jr. As an introduction to the song, I showed the video of The Great Famine that shook Africa in 1983-85. I explained the intensity and death toll of the famine as well. But I was taken aback by the response of learners towards the video. The laughed at an African child crying for food! I tried to stop them. But they didn't seem to empathize with the child onscreen. I felt helpless and disappointed at witnessing the lack of empathy and conpassion in the learners. I ended up talking about empathy for about 5 minutes so that they change their attitude. Then, I played the original version of the song using a bluetooth speaker and discussed the initial lines of it. Juvanna and Rukmini volunteered and sang the song before the class.