Close of the day

Close of the day..... The poetry and prose session was not as fantastic. Mostly because the kids are not very keen on that. I have already tried to dramatise it but alas..... the audio recording also did not work so I have to find another way the next time I have a session to record it.

"... But come down from the mountain peak and walk alone along a forest path. Though it is mid-day it is very dark and very sombre. The sun cannot pierce the dense foliage of the branches of the giant trees, and so heavily do shadows lie upon shadows, that the very green seems almost black. The sheltered air is fresh and cool and there is an almost perfect stillness. Underfoot, except where the path is trodden bare, is a matting of dead leaves and of sweet damp moss. The daily passage of the Malays keeps back the encroachment of brambles and forest creepers. To the right and left of the path the forest appears to be almost impenetrable. The trees grow so thickly together that you are closed in by a small but unbroken circle of tree trunks. Between the trees, there are tangled masses of bushes, briars and saplings. Rattans and creepers of every kind crawl along the ground and among the trees, sometimes hanging in heavy festoons and sometimes tense with the pressure that they exert. So thick and strong is the mass of creepers that when a wood-cutter hacked through a tree-trunk, it is often kept upright by the ligaments that bind it to the surrounding trees."

- Where Monsoons Meet , Donald Moore, 1956.

A Mangrove Swamp

Look how the slow fat bubbles break in rings
As though a man were stifling underneath
The black stagnating water by no breadth
Is stirred, a mirror for all evil things

The long roots writhing upward from the mud
Like fingers crooked in lust or pain or greed
Have pendant tresses of putrescent weed
Like dead men's hair clogged stiff with
Their own blood

No light of flowers nor songs of birds dispel
The breathless, stealthy silence of the place
Only a ripple o'erspreads the water's face
At times like soundless, dreadful mirth in hell

Only the grey mists come and go beneath
The pallid shadows of the silky moon
Only dead voices in the night breeze croon
A drear and melancholy masque of death.

- Anonymous


As for the last 2 periods, I tried to get the students to think about their food supplies. I started the class with the comment "I feel hungry"... the student squickly advised me to get something to eat.... Igradually led them on to answering the questions of "where do you get your food?", "at home? Who cooks it? What does your mother use for cooking? Where does she get her ingredients?" I then pointed out that in Singapore our food sources come directly from the stores but in some places, food has to be grown (some of them said that food cna be hunted). The lesson went to to discuss what shifting agriculture is about and to describe the processes. I then ended the session by asking them to complete the workbook activity so as to tie back the ideas.
Not such a bad session but the 2N1 class was more restless than usual..... wonder why...