Principles of Content Selection
2.5.2 For the Middle and Secondary Stages (R1 & R2)
a. For developing functional language skills: Any learning material that is chosen must allow the learners to grow in the functional use of language. Here is a list of suggested content for this.
i. Choosing themes and topics that are familiar to students and impact their daily life, allowing them to participate in group discussions, debates, role plays etc. For example, traffic jams in cities, effective town planning, floods, drought, pollution, and so on.
ii. Letter writing, whether on paper or by email, is an important skill. Content must have samples of various kinds of letters, especially formal letters, including samples of letters for real-life situations like applying for a new course in a college, a scholarship, a loan in the bank, any application in a government office, police station, court, etc.
iii. Apart from this, a variety of content including notes, presentations, statements of purpose, and presentations; articles, features, news items, and reports; advertisements, posters, banners, headlines, videos, and scripts for social media should be used in language classrooms.
b. For developing literary skills: Students must be introduced to and given adequate exposure to different genres of literature. In the middle stage, introducing nonfiction and fiction would help students broaden there would help their critical reading and writing abilities. In the secondary stage, students must be taught to enjoy the beauty of literature in greater depth and breadth. The selection of literature should be from regional, national, and global writers and varied genres. These can be relevant extracts that students can engage with close and critical reading. The content should also have a diversity of experiences from writers from all walks of life. For example, in Kannada literature, Vachanaganu,
Janapadageete, Janapadakathe, and Lavani are good examples of this. In Tamil Literature, the Thirukkural, and in Assamese literature, stories like Koni Jun, and works of Krishan Kant Hantikar and Jyoti Prasad Agarwala.
c. For developing linguistic skills: The content should help with improving fluency and accuracy of the language. Linguistic aspects such as punctuation marks, use of gender, sentence structures, and tenses must be prominently identifiable in the material to enhance language proficiency in reading, speaking, and writing. Similarly, the selected content should allow students to practice advanced creative writing with greater sophistication using various literary devices and contexts.
d. For eliciting appreciation of linguistic heritage and diversity: Content should consider the multilingual aspect of the Indian subcontinent, making a place for local and regional dialects and language variations in the materials selected. There should be a provision for neighbouring states’ literature to be read by students of each state in the Middle and Secondary Stages (E.g., In Kannada, works of Pampa, Ranna, Janna, and Keshiraja; in Assamese, the story Bir Lasit Phukari that talks about the freedom struggle of local Assamese people and the poetry of Shankardev who has written about the culture of Assamese people).
e. For art and sports integration in the learning of languages: Compositions in art and language can share some common aspects in aesthetics of form, style, and content. Using art to access ideas, to represent feelings and events along with descriptive writing would only enhance the connection to the learning and the expression of the students. Making posters, signs, and symbols, and illustrating for narrative and descriptive writing can lead to an interesting interdisciplinarity of approach in the understanding of language and expression (E.g., Utsara in Assamese textbooks talks about various festivals in the state of Assam and various dance and art forms linked to the festivals). Similarly, using games and activities in language classes as springboards to a conversation (and as energisers) can improve the experience of language learning significantly.
f. For developing values and dispositions: The content chosen should be aligned with the larger purposes of education and values and dispositions that are embedded in NEP 2020 and Constitutional values. This means choosing content that includes authors from all walks of life, kinds of literature that represent local, regional, and linguistic diversity in languages, and explicit teaching of appreciation for the cultures of the subcontinent.
Teacher’s Voice B-2.5-ii (To be edited)
Poem: to analyse a literary text
A curricular goal for secondary grades is for students to develop an appreciation of the aesthetics in different genres through analysis of style and content and employ these ele- ments in their writing. One of the competencies being that the student analyses a literary text by close reading, critiquing form, and style, interpreting possible meanings.
In grade 9, towards this goal, I want my students to achieve the learning outcome: Infers and draws conclusions from the text, identifies different points of view in it, and interprets possible meanings.
The principles I keep in mind for selecting an appropriate content to achieve this learning outcome are:
a. Choose themes and topics that are familiar to students and impact their daily life, allowing them to participate in group discussions, debates, role plays etc.
b. Content should provide opportunity for the students to enjoy the beauty of literature in greater depth and breadth.
c. Linguistic aspects such as punctuation marks, use of gender, sentence structures, and tenses must be prominently identifiable in the material to enhance language proficiency in reading, speaking, and writing.
d. The selected content should allow students to practice advanced creative writing with greater sophistication using various literary devices and contexts.
Keeping these in mind, I chose the following poem as content:
‘You said, I Agreed’ by Anita Nair (From her book Malabar Mind)
You Said, I Agreed Let us be friends, you said Let us be friends, I agreed Let there be nothing more, you said Let there be nothing more, I agreed
I made no declaration, no promises, you said You made no declaration, no promises, I agreed
It was a minor aberration, a detour, you said It was a minor aberration, a detour, I agreed
It isn’t as if I did anything, you said It isn’t as if anything happened, I agreed
We got out of it with dignity, you said We got out of it with dignity, I agreed
The poem is suitable for high school students as it allows them to think hard for possible meanings in a piece of literary text.
The subject of the poem is about a close relationship between two people. The literary element of ‘repetition’ is beautifully used in the poem. It is this ‘repetition’ that gives an opportunity for the students to interpret possible meanings of the text. Right from the title till the last word in the poem, the element of ‘repetition’ is used, and it serves multiple purpose.
The title ‘you said, I agreed’ depicts stress on an important point ‘dominance of one partner over other’ which is crucial for high school students to note in understanding inequality in relationships. But there can be multiple views here on the type of relationships as it is not clear whether it is between male and female or female and female or male and male.
Since the whole poem has repetition of the title in almost each stanza, it creates an impact on the readers and persuades them to think deeply about what is happening in the situa- tion. Again, there can be multiple views on the theme here. Some may argue it is about power struggle, some may call it conflict, some may refer to it as complexity of human relationships. The text offers huge scope for the students to interpret poem differently and brings multiple point of views by close reading of the text.
Lastly the ‘repetition’ also brings a rhythm in the poetry making it like song but again offers multiple ways to recite/sing it. The selection of the words (dignity, aberration) and sentence structures (repetition in all lines except few words that are not changed) can be analysed by