Week 10: WHAT MAKES A QUALITY LITERARY TEXT?

In this lecture, Robyn Ewing discussed about the elements of a quality literary text. She asked us to think of the images, the texts and the meaning in the picture books " Luke's way of looking" written by Eric Carle and "Zoo" written by Anthony Brown. It is interesting that the artist painted the horse blue. In the story " Zoo", the picture of the cage, zoo,  mum, dad and children and the animals implies that we are the prisoners of our relationships. Teacher can use this quality picture book to teach children to express freedom through Drama, music, or role play to show different animals and their thinking of freedom, explore movements through puppet making and performance.

For example, well-loved children’s literature  provide an excellent starting point for mine and other dram activities. Miming familiar characters in a familiar story is very engaging to kids ( Ewing, 2013). They can easily mime how each character feels before and after. They can even walk in role as each character.

Story drama is a more structured drama activity that involves an adult or older child reading a picture book, traditional story, myth, poem or song lyrics. Teachers should know the importance of drama experiences in the lives of young children. This can be done by providing opportunities to embody the events through dramatizing them.


 From the lecture, I realized that a quality literacy should tell students about the world by interesting pictures and imaginative text. I also know that creativity means no prohibition, no border. There is no right or wrong in creativity. In this lecture, I also learn how to choose an appropriate text for primary school students at various stages. We, teachers should have a passion to share quality literacy with the children. As art program will be more active in school setting, we should be more confident about choosing quality literacy. Accordingly, I agreed that a skill-based approach is so wrong as decoding is only a part of the learning process. On its own, it does not enable meaning and understanding.