Pre- reading and while-reading

As I was doing on the play, ‘Dance Like a man’ by Mahesh Dattani, which has never been read by my friends, I decided to concentrate on the character and character traits. There were three of us did on the same play, so we divided on what we wanted to do so that we don’t end up doing the same. My friend, Ahmad Syazwan did on the theme, meanwhile Sivaranjini did on character and character traits, but she was focusing on two characters only, which were Jairaj and Ratna. So I decided to do on the other major character in the play, which is Amritlal.
For my pre-reading, I started off by asking the students what is a character and character traits. Then, I explained them briefly about it. As for my activity, I gave them a worksheet which consists of six short extracts. Based on the extracts, I asked them to identify the characters and come up with a diagram showing the relationship between the characters that have been identified (task 1 and 2) . I chose to do this activity because it will give them a rough idea of the characters that are involved in the play. It will also avoid them from being lost when doing my tasks as they have never read the play before.
Meanwhile, for my while reading activity, I decided to ask my friends to identify Amritlal’s traits based on the extract given. However, I decided to it a bit differently. I divided my class to two groups, group A and Group B. Then, I asked the students in group A to get into pairs, and gave each pair an extract each. I gave the students in group B a personal trait each. After that, I asked the students with the extract to identify which personal trait that their friends having matches their extract best. I also asked one representative from each pair to read their extract and the personal trait of Amritlal based on the extract. Due to time constrain, I only manage to get one pair to do so. However, I read out the answers for them and asked them to write the personal traits for each extract in the space given in their worksheet (task 3). This task allowed them to know more about the traits of the character Amritlal. I also posted them a question in their worksheet asking them to determine the kind of relationship Amritlal is having with his son. As they have gone through the extracts and the personal traits of Amritlal, the students were able to answer the question.
So far, I think the activities that I did for my pre-reading and while- reading was able to enhance student’s understanding of the play. It could have been better if there were no time constraint to finish up the activities.