Whitney’s Kiss Teacher’s Guide

Description

This Teacher’s Guide accompanies the novel Whitney’s Kiss, published by Voices in Africa. Whitney’s Kiss is a story for learners in Grades 6-10 with the primary aim of helping to prevent HIV/AIDS.

The novel powerfully speaks for itself and students should first of all be encouraged to read it at their own pace from cover to cover. With the focus on peer education, students will easily identify with and be challenged and inspired by the characters in the book. However, your learners can also benefit much from further class discussions, activities and exercises, which will encourage critical thinking and decision-making. This Teacher’s Guide is designed to help you with some ideas in this regard.

Whitney’s Kiss can be used as a reader in the Life Orientation or Language Learning Areas. The book seeks to promote and achieve the following critical and developmental outcomes of OBE, congruent with the Revised National Curriculum Statement:

• The book encourages critical thinking and decision making, especially as they relate to values. This is one of the book’s main themes and is achieved through the portrayal of opposing values and behaviour patterns within the plot. Learners will find themselves having to evaluate whether or not they can agree and identify with the different characters in the book, and with opposing sides of conflicts within the plot.

• Whitney’s Kiss helps the learner understand the inter-relatedness of systems and problems in the young person’s world of school, home, community and relationships. The book clearly illustrates to the learner that the problems and solutions associated with HIV and AIDS do not exist in a context of isolation.

• The book has a multicultural cast and seeks to promote cultural understanding and sensitivity, whilst attempting to maintain relevance and appeal to a wide spectrum of different learners from various backgrounds.

• Although this is not a main theme of the book, Whitney’s Kiss portrays the teaching profession in a positive and inspiring light, thereby promoting learners’ evaluation of this profession as a noble and worthwhile possible career opportunity.

Whitney’s Kiss seeks to promote and achieve the following specific learning outcomes for the Languages Learning Area for each of the languages in which the book is available. (The novel is intended for either the First Additional Language level or Home Language level, depending on the Grade and age of the learners):

• The book is rich in dialogue and vocabulary, and can be used in a variety of ways to promote the integration of all six of the stated learning outcomes of listening, speaking, reading and viewing, writing, thinking and reasoning, and language structure and use.

• Whitney’s Kiss strongly promotes the integration of values into language learning. The text carries both positive and negative values, and encourages learners to analyse these and resist the negative values.

Whitney’s Kiss seeks to promote and achieve the following specific learning outcomes for the Life Orientation Learning Area:

• Health Promotion: the text addresses the social and personal problems associated with lifestyle choices and high-risk behaviours, in particular with reference to HIV/AIDS. Integration and application by the learner of the critical values, behaviours and lifestyle choices promoted in this book, will have a positive effect on the health, quality of life and well-being of the learner.

• Social Development: as mentioned above, the book’s multicultural cast and context seek to promote mutual
understanding and respect among the different cultures in the South African context.

• Personal Development: Whitney’s Kiss aims to equip learners with the necessary life skills and judgement to respond effectively to the challenge of HIV/AIDS.

• Orientation to the World of Work: please refer to the above-mentioned point regarding the book’s depiction of the teaching profession.