LEARNERS’ MODULE

Teaching English in Elementary Grades

through Literature

Student’s Name, Course

Subject Instructor

S.Y. 2020-2022

LEARNERS’ MODULE In
Teaching English in Elementary Grades through Literature

Overview of the Module

DESCRIPTION
This module in Teaching English in Elementary Grades through Literature is
made possible for you students to successfully communicate and connect as you
engage in each activity. This module will lead you through all challenging activity no
matter how difficult it may be.
The author believes that this module can help you achieve the goals and surpass the
challenges of the distance learning.

PURPOSE
This module in Teaching English in Elementary Grades through Literature
include tasks for learning and performance assessments in the following areas;

 Create opportunities for your students to communicate effectively in English

through exposure to children’s literature.
 Enable you to help your students absorb the values expressed in literature.
 Help you identify and use effective strategies to stimulate students’ interest in
the extensive reading of literature.
 Help you organize collaborative and interactive tasks around children’s
literature, and
 Use literature to develop critical and creative use of language.

GUIDE
Learning Outcomes gives a clear statement of what you expected to be able to do,
know about the value at the completion of the module, and how well you should be
expected to achieve the outcomes.

Learning Plan: Plans your learning over a period of time, in order to manage your
learning. It is divided into parts.
1. Activity: Activates your schemata refreshes your background knowledge and
the topics to be tackled in the module. You need to read the instructions
carefully and follow as you are told. You will be introduced to the different
topics and key concepts you should know.

2. Analysis: Breaks down the lesson into different parts so as to make it e3asier
for you to understand. You will work independently to get into the details of
the lesson. Examples are given along the way to make it easier to
understand.
 3. Abstraction: Builds upon the concepts you have learned from the module, and
help you look back and reflect.

4. Application: gives opportunity to let your learned concepts be used in the

rreal-world situations. You will apply what you have learned through critical
thinking activities.

Feedback: Measures whether you have learned a lesson’s information and

successfully met the lesson’s objectives. This will also encourage you to improve a
lesson after it has been completed.
Summary: Offer a brief review of the lesson. In order to understand the lesson
better, please make it a habit to visit the summary.

Module 1 in Teaching English in

Elementary Grades through Literature

ANALYSING LITERATURE; INTRODUCTION TO THE LANGUAGE OF

LITERARY TEXTS

Introduction
 This focus primarily on how to create diverse opportunities for students to
develop their English language skills through exposure to the language of literature.
This will involve engaging students with various genres of literature such as poetry,
fiction and drama to develop their vocabulary and mastery of grammatical structures.
This also aims to help you introduce to your students the different stylistic forms of
literary texts. The objective of this is to enhance language use through familiarity with
a range of vocabulary and structures as used in literary texts. This approach to the
study of literary texts, leading to language-literature integration, sees literature
classes as laboratories or practical workshops for the development of students’
language and communicative competence.

OUTCOMES
Upon completion of this you will be able to:

 Enable to enhance your vocabulary with interactive tasks using poetry,

 Familiarize with the special uses of language in drama by converting a prose
text into a short play, and
 Analyse children’s literature using language resources.

VOCABULARY (TERMINOLOGY)
DISCOURSE PATTERNS Text arrangements beyond the sentence level,
including paragraphs, connectors, etc.
GENRES Types of literature such as poetry, drama and
prose.
LANGUAGE COMPETENCE Language proficiency that includes the ability to
communicate effectively in a language.
COMMUNICATION SKILLS The ability to use the language skills of
listening, speaking, reading and writing to
effectively perform various language functions
such as greeting, agreeing, requesting, and
exchanging social niceties and so on.
COMMUNICATIVE The ability of speakers of a language to know
COMPETENCE what to say to whom, and when. In other words,
communicative competence includes the
knowledge of the vocabulary and structures of
the language as well as the social norms of
speaking.
INTEGRATED APPROACH This suggests using literature to teach language
skills and the resources of language (words,
collocations, sentence structures, paragraph
connectors, metaphorical expressions, etc.) to
teach literature.
LITERACY SKILLS These include the ability to read and write in a
language.
CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS This involve the ability to reflect on a piece of
spoken or written discourse and to evaluate its
 strengths and weaknesses in terms of both
conceptual and language clarity.

Read and examine the case study below. The aim of this is to use strategies
and resources to enhance your language competence through literature. You will be
able to use your familiarity with the literary devices used in prose, poetry and drama
to help your future students to communicate effectively and eloquently. You will also
find ideas to encourage your future students to explore the interesting uses of words,
phrases, and sounds in literary texts. This should increase students’ awareness of
literary language and help them understand literature better.

CASE STUDY
In Mr. Guttierez’s English class at Secondary Demonstration, students worked
on a play called The Wives Revolt by J.P. Clark. As part of the project, the students
were asked to focus on different aspects of language demonstrated in the play.
The students began by reading and acting out excerpts from the play with
their teacher. For the performance, they were encouraged to choose the sections
that they found most interesting. Mr. Guttierez followed up on this enjoyable
experience by encouraging the students to look more carefully at the sections they
had chosen, to see how the grammatical structures of the sentences and word
groups made the play more interesting. Working in groups, the students selected
nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs and their combinations of literary expressions
brought to the play.
After this activity, Mr. Guttierez prompted the groups to use the interesting
structures in their own stories. They were encouraged to illustrate their stories with
pictures, charts, diagrams and drawings.
The students greatly enjoyed this experience as it gave them an opportunity
to use grammar in an interesting and creative ways. They were also happy to see
how the same language resources (sentences, clauses, phrases, and word
combinations) could be used in interesting ways in different literary genres such as
plays and stories.

ACTIVITY 1.1.
Write your answer on a long bond paper( it could be written, type-written, printed).
1. Do you agree that we can teach grammar fruitfully through literature? Why or
why not?
2. Do you feel literary texts should be explained to students in the class so that
they understand the real meaning? Or should students be allowed to work
 together and discover the meaning of a text by themselves? Which of the
above procedures do you follow in class, and why?
3. What do you think are the methods used by the teacher in the above study?
4. If you were the teacher, would you do the same? Why or why not?

USING A POEM FOR VOCABULARY ENHANCEMENT

Read carefully the material below

THE IMPROBABLE
The improbable happens in unexpected places-
A young woman of twenty three hangs herself
After leaving a note: “Nobody loves me, I have no man:
What a pity, what a pity, what a pity.

None would have thought it possible

That a nubile woman would die for lack of love
When too many were dying for making-love
And many sell love in public places all over the world

The new disease afflicts so many who love in haste

The disease is not written on the face and knows no bound
They have searched in vain to cure themselves of love
Love that’s a scary scourge in the eyes of wary.

And yet who’s spared from debility and death

That love proffers to lovers tied her a noose
Her favorite wrapper to a fruiting tree outside
Love that is not in haste is not in waste.

ACTIVITY 1.2
Write your answer on a long bond paper( it could be written, type-written, printed).
1. Look for the meaning of the underlined words and use each word in a
sentence based on the meaning given in the poem.
2. Who do you think is the speaker of the poem? Who is he/she speaking to?
 3. What is the message of the poem? To whom it is addressed?

ACTIVITY 1.3
*Deliver the poem orally using a sound recorder and submit it through GOOGLE
CLASSROOM.
*Give your own interpretation of the poem orally.

ACTIVITY 1.4
Cross-Genre
*Create your own short story out of the poem above.
Use the guidelines below in making your story.
1. Is the title of the story interesting?
2. Does the plot illustrated well?
3. Do the events of the story has a clear beginning, middle and end?
4. Are the characters clearly developed?
5. Do the settings reflect the theme of the story and its plot?
6. Do the words and structures reflect a natural use of language?
7. Do the dialogues/scenarios resemble real-life conversations/situations?
8. Are appropriate punctuations and spellings are used?

SUMMARY
 In this module, you learned how to develop your language competence
through exposure to samples of literature. You learned the need to listen
to and orally practice story and poetic presentations, and about the need
to expose to creative writing for a variety of purposes and variety of
settings.

REFERENCES

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjbzhF8JNF4
Collie J. and S. Slater, 1990. Literature in the Language Classroom: A resource
Book of Ideas and Activities. Cambridge: CUP
Stern, S. 1991 “An Integrated Approach to Literature in ESL/EFL. Ed. Murcia, M.
Boston: Heinle and Heinle Publishers