Alfie's Reflection III - Learning Journey

What did you enjoy about the learning journey? What did you learn from it?

The literature fieldtrips I had in secondary school included only forums about answering the unseen passage and the prescribed texts. I never thought that it was possible to hold a literature field trip like the one that we did on that rainy Monday afternoon. I think all the activities stimulated thinking and were very engaging. Being in the very spaces that inspired writers to craft the poems we explored certainly allowed us to “appreciate the importance of contexts in which literary texts are written and understood” (MOE, Literature in English Syllabus 2013).

The activity that I enjoyed most was the one at Ann Siang Hill. I like that there was the opportunity to first share stories about the photographs of the old places and from there, ease into the reading of the poem about the Old House at Ann Siang. My group decided to break the poems into parts and we took turns to read the poem. Reading and listening to the poem being read out in the very vicinity of Ann Siang allowed us to truly immerse ourselves in the ‘reality’ of the poem. It certainly awakened and heightened our senses and awareness of what the poem seeks to convey. Such an experience may be hard to simulate in a classroom setting, and that renders the field trip experience to be an important and valuable educational tool.

Efforts to preserve our heritage are prevalent. However, the fieldtrip seems to question if those efforts are effective, does it truly celebrate or portray the essence of our built and living heritage, what are the losses and gains from preserving or not preserving what we have left of our past? I think Singapore does a great job in preserving our built heritage (e.g. shophouses at Ann Siang, Chinatown) but it’s preserved so well to the point that it becomes mere simulacra of a past that becomes increasingly hard to imagine. This actually reminds me of one of the History forum some of us attended a few years back. Someone in the audience talked about an artistic collaboration themed “Imagined nostalgia”. “The work is based on how our imaginations create false memories of what actually happened in the past — how we remember something from the past and embellish it to make it seem worse or better, larger than life, different.” The manner in which our heritage sites are being preserved seems to parallel “imagined nostalgia.” The history and heritage of our past seems to have been reconstructed and its richness diluted when we look at our preserved sites. This may be inevitable because of the need to commercialize those sites so that it remains relevant in our economically driven country.

What interdisciplinary possibilities are there?

The theme ‘old places’ seem to also engage subjects such as History and Social Studies. As Whitehead and Tang mentions in Exploring Local Texts and Spaces through Literature Field Trips, field trips can spark “a newfound appreciation of the history behind the literary writing and a renewed impetus to recover the layers of meaning behind locally written texts” (210). This can help us gain a deeper understanding of the poems read. Also, the trip to URA is a good platform for students to trace the development of Singapore as well as to gain contextual/background information to the local texts we are exploring. In designing activities for the field trip, Art and Drama elements can be used to allow students to express and articulate understanding of the poems or text.

How can you design and use learning journeys for effective learning in and out of your classrooms?

I think substantial planning is essential when it comes to learning journeys. A pre and a post activity would also make the learning journey relevant to students’ exploration of poems or a text. A pre activity should spark students’ curiosity or at least ease students into the relevance of the fieldtrip. A post activity should allow students to consolidate their experience and understandings from the fieldtrip like we did with the creative task and reflection.

The manner in which we phrase our questions would also draw the line between a fieldtrip that’s all about getting answers and a fieldtrip that’s experiential learning. The questions we were tasked to answer in our URA trip were open-ended and required thinking and understanding.  We couldn’t just pick out the answers from the many information panels. There was a need to understand the information presented. This, I think, is fundamental in learning journeys as it can transform students' learning experience.