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about
us
We are an
English performance course (Leistungskurs) in the first half of year
13. What we did up to now can be seen on our web-pages |  here
they are |. Shortly speaking: A mixture of narrative texts like
"The War Between the Classes" by Gloria Miklowitz, "A
Good Read" (British short stories) and John Steinbecks "Of
Mice and Men". In between we worked on all sorts of topical
issues which had to do with the literary texts we were working on or
with current events around us. Our
working surrounding was (and is) quite a good one, as we regularly
spent one double-period in our comfortable multimedia-centre |
let's see the b@hanum
| in quite a motivating surrounding with a perfect internet access. Concerning
methods: Part of our work done as portfolio work | detailed
teacher's description |. Lest we forget, the second course-phase
was devoted to the "Facharbeit" (negotiated study). Each
of us worked on an individual topic of a novel (there were five
novels, all covering the topic of "Migration, immigration,
emigration") and in class we concentrated on the same topic but
seen from the European perspective and the issues to be found in the
daily newspapers: "Fortress Europe". Some results are
online:
|
Fortress
Europe | |
"Hopes
and Dreams" - Novels |
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why "Out of Bounds"? Teacher's
idea: I wanted to work on literature from English-speaking countries,
not from the US and GB so South Africa was interesting enough,
especially because of all the changes still going on and of the
historical development. Looking
around for books I didn't find much which convinced me. What was
left to be chosen from was
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"Contemporary
South African Short Stories" (Reclam)
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William Boyd "A
Good Man in Africa" (Klett/Penguin) |more
about it|
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...and Beverley
Naidoo's "Out of Bounds"
The course got three
papers with detailed information on the material chosen by me and
decided on "Out of Bounds". From my point of view it was a
good decision. Although it's rather a book for younger readers than
my advanced course folks, the literary technique employed is a very
good one and the stories are simply good stories with well chosen
charcters and convincing plots. Especially the clever arrangement of
stories dealing with key-events of the Apartheid decades between
1948 and 2000 are challenging: It's not just the plain stories which
are dealt with in class, but there's loads of information to be
retrieved and worked out for a real understanding - not only of
Apartheid but of discriminating behaviour and measures among people
and peoples in general, too.
I definitely liked
working with this book in class.
Not used during class
but highly advisable for teachers and learners because of the
historical information:
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how did we start? 
More
or less traditionally with a general approach: "What do we know
about the Republic of South Africa", etc. The first story we
dealt with was from the Reclam-collection ("The Suitcase"
by Es'kia Mhpahlele) to get in touch with unusual names, places,
situations, surroundings, atmosphere, supported by songs from Miriam
Makeba and Ladysmith Black Mambazo | Website
| - and the last one was from the Reclam booklet as well: "The
Prisoner Who Wore Glasses (Bessie Head). And of course, we simply
had to see the Richard Attenborough Steve Biko film "Cry
Freedom" | BBC
info about the film |. zurück
how we worked The
stories of the book were read and worked out chronologically. To
understand the historical background, the "Time-line across
apartheid" at the back of the book is helpful, giving brief
details to events, which are normally unknown. With some stories I
prepared handouts with basic information from the web (Sharpville
Massacre -excellent: Guardian
article-, Soweto Riots, Manifesto of Umkhonto we Sizwe). Luckily,
we had our double-periods in the multi-media room so a lot of deeper
research into historical events and more was done there, mainly in
groups. zurück
about the hypertext-project Having
different stories, different characters, different historical events,
loads of impressions about all that and even more information
available there has to be something like a harvest season. Thus
web-pages bring together again what was taken into pieces during
lessons and can help to focus on the overall topic of apartheid, so
there we were. The course worked in groups and each group prepared
texts, additional information and pictures for the web-pages.
Luckily, this course is quite competent concerning working with the
internet and computers as well as creating web-pages, preparing
photos, etc. My
role? To assist, to suggest, to help, to correct - and to do the
final check of links & corporate identity lay-out, here you are! zurück
test ( Klausur) Wasn't
a problem: We simply left out the final story but everybody was
supposed to read it, of course, and here we were, writing a
Klausur which for me was interesting to read, to correct and to mark
- and one of these days an extract of the results will hopefully be
found on these webpages because we still miss information about
"Out of Bounds". | Klausur
| Reinhard
Donath, Aurich, January 31st, 2003 |my
website |
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