MacKillop Unit Planner Incorporating VELS

MacKillop Discipline: English Unit Title: Meaning Makers

Level: 10 Enhanced (6-6.75) Terms: 3 & 4 2008

Part 1Concept and Key Word: Reading for meaningKey Idea: Through illustrative and written texts it is possible to create multi-layered levels of meaning. These meanings are never fixed and can be constructed by individual readers/viewers in unique ways when they use their own understandings, beliefs and ideas to explore the text.

Investigation into:The relationships between written language and illustrative language Postmodern picture booksThe illustrative process

Part 2Students will learn about (content):How the following elements shape texts: purpose and audience , values, intertextuality, narrative structure, language features and visual/stylistic featuresHow readers interpret texts differently : The influences on readers interpretations of texts: context – historical, social, cultural, political etcHow picture books have developed over time : Written and illustrative processes in the creation of a picture book, Encoding meaning through the creation of words and images

Students will learn to (processes):Interpret visual images , Read and analyse picture story books, Create a postmodern picture story book, Describe what makes a good picture book, Work in teams, Reflect on their own learning, Critically analyse written and illustrative text

Part 3Essential Questions:How can pictures tell a story? Where does meaning come from? How many meanings are there in a text? What factors influence the meanings made in a text? How do words and pictures work both independently and together to create meaning? How has the picture book changed over time? What is the postmodern picture book and has it changed the traditional audiences of the genre? How do values shape texts?

Part 4Literacy Considerations:One theory that underpins the learning in this unit is Luke and Freebody’s 4 Resource Model:This model will be used in the creation of a visual text of their own.

Text encoder practices - break the code of written texts by recognizing and using fundamental features and architecture, including alphabet, sounds in words, spelling, and structural conventions and patterns Text participant practices - participate in understanding and composing meaningful written, visual, and spoken texts, taking into account each text's interior meaning systems in relation to their available knowledge and their experiences of other cultural discourses, texts, and meaning systems Text user practices - use texts functionally by traversing and negotiating the labour and social relations around them -- that is, by knowing about and acting on the different cultural and social functions that various texts perform inside and outside school, and understanding that these functions shape the way texts are structured, their tone, their degree of formality, and their sequence of components Text analyst practices - critically analyse and transform texts by acting on knowledge that texts are not ideologically natural or neutral -- that they represent particular points of views while silencing others and influence people's ideas -- and that their designs and discourses can be critiqued and redesigned in novel and hybrid ways

Another theory that underpins this unit was developed by the Frankfort School of Social Critical Theory:Social Critical Theory of literacy - A social critical theory of literacy is based in the view that literacy is constructed from social practice. That is, all social practices (such as discussing, justifying, listening, playing, reading, speaking, thinking, viewing or writing) involve literate activities of some kind. Through these literate practices we construct and reconstruct our ideas about the world. Because literate practices lead to the shaping of ideology and attitudes, the development of critical literacy skills is considered an essential component of social critical theory.

Critically literate people understand how texts work, who benefits from their construction, and who controls access to them. Because of this they have the power to make informed decisions about how they will use text, and what authority they will accord it. Critically literate people will therefore have the power to transform their social futures. A social critical view of literacy also acknowledges that, because society is continually changing, literacy and the way it is enacted in social situations will continue to change(Notes taken from: http://education.qld.gov.au/curriculum/learning/literate-futures/glossary.html)

Literature List* Teachers can choose any picture books they like, these are the ones I have used in the unitShaun Tan – The Red Tree, The Lost Thing, Tales from Outer Suburbia, The Arrival , Margaret Wild/Anne Spudvilas – Woolvs in the SiteeShel Silverstein – The Giving Tree M. Barbalet – The Wolf, Anthony Browne – The Tunnel, Zoo, J. Burningham – Come away from the water, Shirley, Tohby Riddle – The Singing Hat, The Great Escape from the City Zoo, Gary Crew – Tagged, The Viewer, Memorial, Dr. Seuss – Horton hears a Who, Oh, the places you’ll go!, Golden Books – Tootle, The Saggy Baggy Elephant, Scuffy the Tugboat, The Shy Little Kitten John Marsden/Shaun Tan – The Rabbits, Matt Ottley – Requiem for a Beast, David Metzenthen/Sally Rippin – The Rain Birds, Maurice Sendak – Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, Li Cunxin/Anne Spudvilas – The Peasant Prince Colin Thompson – Dust, Armin Greder – The Island, Libby Gleeson & Armin Greder – The Great Bear

Part 5Assessment measurement instruments:

Informal (eg observation) Formal

Assessment for: Class chat/response to Woolvs in the Sitee Notebook file: graph

Who makes meaning in a text?

Assessment as:Observations/video footage of students reflecting on their learning Peer-led reflections on class wiki working as a team

Assessment of:Observation/video footage of students discussing thoughts and ideas

Picture story book Exam: Essay

product

Rubric: Please consider the strands when formulating your rubric.

Part 6Aspects of VELS Standards in all Strands addressed in this unit

Strand Domains Dimensions

Sentence no. in the Standard Sentence/s of the Standard

Physical, Personal and Social Learning

Interpersonal Development Working in teams 1,2,3,4

At Level 6, students work collaboratively, negotiate roles and delegate tasks to complete complex tasks in teams

Working with the strengths of a team they achieve agreed goals within set timeframes

Students describe how they respect and build on the ideas and opinions of team members and clearly articulate or record their reflections on the effectiveness of learning in a team

They develop and implement strategies for improving their contributions to achieving the team goals

Discipline Based Learning Reading 1,3,4

At Level 6, students read, view, analyse, critique, reflect on and discuss contemporary and classical imaginative texts that explore personal, social, cultural and political issues of significance to their own lives

They explain how texts are shaped by the time, place and cultural setting in which they are created

They compare and contrast the typical features of particular texts and synthesise information from different texts to draw conclusions

English Writing1,3,4,6,7,8

At Level 6, students write sustained and cohesive narratives that experiment with different techniques and show attention to chronology, characterisation, consistent point of view and development of a resolution

They select subject matter and begin to use a range of language techniques to try to position readers to accept particular views of people, characters, events, ideas and information

They compose a range of other texts, such as feature articles, webpages and workplace texts

They write accurately punctuated, grammatically sound and complex sentences with embedded clauses and phrases

They are able to maximise the effects of rhythm and tone, and write with developing fluency

They proofread and edit their own writing for accuracy, consistency and clarity

Inter- disciplinary Learning ICT

ICT for visualising thinking 1,3,4

At Level 6, students use a range of ICT tools and data types to visualise their thinking strategies when solving problems and developing new understanding

Students are efficient and effective in their use of appropriate ICT tools and editing techniques for assisting in visualising thinking

When solving problems, students discriminate between such tools and strategies based on their suitability for problem solving in new situations

Thinking Creativity 1,2,3At Level 6, students experiment with innovative possibilities within the parameters of a task

They take calculated risks when defining tasks and generating solutions

They apply selectively a range of creative thinking strategies to broaden their knowledge and engage with contentious, ambiguous,

novel and complex ideas

Part 7

Unit Introduction Resources

Pre test Notebook graph – who makes meaning in a text? IWB

(can be done in Excel or any imaging program) Notebook file – meaning making

Immersion activityReading lesson – read through books chosen from the book box Books from literature list

Student questions Area on the wiki for students to pose questions as they arise Internet

Computer access

Class wiki

Part 8

Exploring the unit: Student Activities/Teacher StrategiesResources

NOTE: At the start of this unit the teacher needs to set up a class wiki. This is used throughout the unit to share information and ideas and provide a space for students to work collaboratively across space and time. www.wikispaces.com

Pre-Testing IWB & Notebook software (or similar program)Who makes meaning in a text?

Set up a graph-style template in the SmartBoard Notebook software (or similar program), and display it on the Interactive White Board (IWB). Notebook file – graph

Have students come up one at a time and move a rectangle onto the graph, explaining their choice out of authors or readers, or ‘other’. At this stage, students do not have to explain their choice.

At the end, look at the graph that has been made – what trend do you see?

Get a few students who chose ‘author’ to explain why, then ‘reader’, then ‘other’. This should lead onto a class discussion about how we read texts and the influences on meaning making.

Who are picture story books for?

Complete the same activity, this time on the new question. This can lead into a discussion about different types of children’s books, reading practices, the role of picture books, evolution of the

genre etc.

Follow up this activity by looking at The Arrival and Tales from Outer Suburbia. Do you think these books are for children only?

Picture Books

Immersion activity - Spend a lesson with the students simply reading and exploring many different picture books. Offer a wide variety of books (for a list of suggested books see the literacy considerations section) and allow students to spend as little or as much time as they wish looking at the different books. Literature Box containing approx 30

picture books.

Woolvs in the Sitee – by Margaret Wild & Anne Spudvilas

Gather students together (they may want to sit on the floor for story time) and read the book Woolvs in the Sitee to them. Allow them sufficient time to absorb each illustration. Go through the book again so that students can comment on each illustration and the text on the pages, then discuss the following questions: How does the book make you feel? What audience/s do you think the book is for? What do you think the book is about? What stylistic features in the illustrations do you see? What do you think the meanings behind them might be? What is the effect of the language style?

Critical LiteracyJigsaw ActivityForm 5 groups – this should be about 5 students per group. Hand each group out one of the sets of questions contained on the sheet – these need to be cut up beforehand. The group works together to answer the questions and each member of the group records the answers.When finished: each member of the group goes to a different table, so tables end up having one ‘expert’ from each activity on the table.Activity after reading/discussion – Students can do any number of the activities/questions contained in the Penguin notes for the book.

Historical perspective ActivityAs a class, create a table that functions as a timeline in Word/excel – this should be done using the IWB, it is then saved and left up on display.The time period should range from the 1960’s to now and be split into 10 year intervals. The columns should read as follows:

Time Period > World events/Social Values > Developments in Picture BooksStudents need to do independent research using: the Internet, library reference section and the books in the book box (picture book collection). They need to find out events that happened in the world, changing lifestyles in different eras, social values of the time and family relationships – they can then add dot points to the class timeline using the IWB.

Students also need to track changes in picture story books over time – what kinds of books were being written, popular authors, plot lines, relationship between text and illustration etc.Once students have entered all the data into the timeline, view it as a class.Discuss: how have the social values of people over time effected the development of picture story books?Upload the table onto the class wiki

Golden Books - a moral compass

Little Golden Books started in 1942 – to reinforce socially acceptable behaviour, responsibility and appropriate values.Activity: In a small group, read the Golden Book ‘Tootle’, and answer the following questions: What is the moral of the story? How is this picture book different to the postmodern story book? Are these books still popular today? Why do think this is so? Whose attitudes and values are being presented? Who has power in this text?

Immersion activity – Close reading

Allow students to choose a book from the box that they like, and do the following activities. Students can get together in small groups to work with those doing the same book.

Write On Reading

Students have post-it notes, as they read the text, they respond in the same way as they might to a speaker who is questioning them.Golden Book selection – Tootle is a particularly good examplePost-it notes - Book box Questions Points of agreement or disagreement Emotional reactions Highlight areas requiring further information Highlight links to previous study or life experiences Wonderings – Who wrote this text? What stance is the author taking? Who is represented?

Visual Elements word splashUsing the word splash page, students identify and describe the visual elements contained within their chosen text. This can then become a springboard for discussion about what these elements mean/represent.

Reading for Meaning - Activities

Sort students into groups of approx 4, there should be 6 groups. There are 3 activities so 2 groups will do the same activity. When they finish they report back to the class on what they have done or upload their work to the wiki for sharing.

1. Read Tohby Riddles The Great Escape from City Zoo and find all the intertextual references contained within, stick post it notes on the pages with explanations of the reference and create a slideshow of the referenced images

The Great Escape from City Zoo – 2 copies

2. Read Come away from the water, Shirley and trace the developments of the three narratives – 2 illustrative and one written. Whose is the dominant story? What are the power relationships being shown to the reader? How does the language used by the characters illustrate these power relationships? What comment is Burningham making about family relationships?

Come away from the water, Shirley– 2 copies

Both contain references to the artwork 5pm Collins Street – can you find them? Can you find any references to religious icons or the Shroud of Turin in Woolvs in the Sitee?

The

following notes can be put onto the wiki for student reference - made into a mind map and uploaded, made into a .ppt slideshow and shared via SlideShare, google docs etc.

Postmodernism in picture story books - Notes

What is Postmodernism?Postmodernism is a genre of art, literature and architecture created in reaction against the principles and practices of established modernism. In other words, it questions and criticises the established norms and power relationships.

When we look at picture books we need to ask ourselves: whose representation of the world are we seeing and whose attitudes and values are being conveyed?

A postmodern picture book often contains:

Metafictive elements – designed to interrupt reader expectation, examples are when the narrative voice speaks to you eg. Woolvs in the Sitee’s final line is ‘join me’, or The Wolf when the young girl is looking at the reader on the front cover. When characters look directly at the reader this invites them to become a participant in the text.

Intertextuality – referring to the works of others

Representation

Questions: Who is represented? Whose point of view is favoured? Where are the gaps and silences?

Often in postmodern works the traditional voice of the parent/adult in society is silenced – postmodern picture books seek to give a voice to the child or represent child’s view of the world.

The words are the domain of the adult and the pictures are the domain of the child, so increasingly we see an emphasis on images rather than words and a richness of meaning in the illustrations – this empowers the child in the meaning making process.

Illustration

Picture books have ‘plural’ texts which are related but independent. What meaning is produced by the interaction of the texts?

Words can tell what the picture doesn’t show, and the pictures can show what the picture doesn’t tell.

Poor illustration = leaves nothing for the imagination or simply mirrors the written text

Eg. Tohby Riddle’s The Singing Hat and Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing and The Red Tree

Image of the artwork ‘5pm Collins St’ by John Barker

3. Read The Wolf and The Tunnel and explain how metafictive elements are used in the books by the illustrator. Why do illustrators leave gaps for the reader? What effect do they have? How have you filled in the gaps for yourselves? What is the relationship in these texts between the written and illustrative texts?

Visual element - LINE

Using the ActivBook Reader program:Choose 7-10 and go into the Arts folder > Visual ArtsChoose the activity called ‘Line’ and work through the lesson, reading the info as you go and doing the following:

Choose one or two books from the book box and read through them, paying attention to the lines used by the illustrator Choose a suitable graphic organiser from the Intranet Learning Areas > year 10 English to analyse what types of lines are used – describe them with examples from the book, and then describe what effect these lines have on the reader – what they mean. You should have specific areas in your organiser to address the stroking attributes (value, colour, pattern and texture), position and line relationship. Complete the creative activities as described in the ActivBook Reader in Paint, Photoshop or Fireworks

Show the slideshow ‘Interpreting Line’ and discuss examples of this from the text Woolvs in the SiteeAnalysing visual elementsHand out the ‘How do we read picture books?’ sheet and read through for understanding.Hand out the word splash page to the students – this contains the words colour, design, media, line, balance, layout, texture. Students choose a picture story book and write notes for all of these visual features, noting anything they find interesting, analysing how these features work and how they create meaning.

Viewing and Voicing activities

Give students a copy of any of the Viewing and Voicing activities from the Booked Out Mutliliteracy resource. These are available for Shaun Tan’s ‘The Arrival’, Colin Thompson’s ‘Dust’, Li Cunxin’s ‘The Peasant Prince’ and more.The Wolf, The Tunnel – 2 copies of eachComputer accessSoftware: ActivBook Reader

Selection of graphic organiser templates – T chart, venn diagram etc – these can be downloaded from http://vels.vcaa.vic.edu.au/support/ domainsupport/thinking/organisers .html#H2N1003B

Imaging program eg. Photoshop

‘How do we read picture books?’ – resource from Michele Green, CEO MelbourneViewing and Voicing - .pdf files in the Multiliteracies folder

Discuss the questions that are raised on the sheets in small groups or pairs and then do the activities on the sheet. Groups might present their thoughts to the rest of the class if they wish to, and upload them onto the wiki

Close Reading: The Red Tree

Sort students into table groups of 4 students per table.Provide each table group with a copy of ‘The Red Tree’ by Shaun Tan

Cumulative Activity: each table has a copy of each of the 3 x A3 sized sheets to fill in.

This activity is timed and follows rotations of 10 mins each – after 10 minutes of reading and filling in the sheets, groups pass it on to the next table. This table then reads/discusses what the first group wrote and adds to the sheets with new ideas.Ideas cannot be repeated – a table cannot write the same things they wrote on a previous sheet, nor can they write something another table wrote. This challenges students to generate new ideas and to think more and more deeply about their responses.

If needed, cut the time down on the last few rotations if students are running out of ideas.

At the end of this process you should have 6 pages of each sheet, filled with the ideas of the whole class.Compile this information into a grid and upload it onto the wiki.

1. Idea/contract

2. Research

3. Storyboard

4. Roughs

5. Dummy

6. Roughs

7. Final Artwork

8. Publication

When groups are finished, they leave their visual representation on the table and students can spend 10

minutes walking around, looking at what other groups created and discussing similarities and differences

between the models.

Display the posters in the classroom to help students to complete their own books. They should try to model

their own practice based on the real life production techniques.

Other visual stimulus for studying written/illustrative process: Posters – ‘Building Books’ and

Posters from The Age newspaper – laminated copy in library‘Finding Stories’ - The Age, 18/8/08,

Have these posters up in the room as a resource for making picture books All about books section pp. 6-7

Assessment Task 2 – Picture Story Book

To create the picture story books to a high standard the students need to work in large groups of approx 6.

The real-world purposes of these books are to display in the school library when finished, and to read them to

a real audience. You may want to do a digital storytelling session with the younger students at your school, or

visit a local primary school to share the books with younger students.

Grouping:

Roles should be negotiated with the class – they have already learned who works on producing a picture book

in the real world, so this information should be used to streamline the process for the assessment task’s

purposes.

Suggested roles: IllustratorIllustrator’s assistantEditorAuthorLayout/designerManager

The class nominates 4 students to be the illustrators of the books – these students could be to be the 4 most talented illustrators/artists in the class.

Other students nominate their 1st and 2nd preferences, taking into account their strengths and weaknesses. Teacher slots students into a spreadsheet to allocate them into groups based on their preferences, work habits and individual learning needs.

Groups need to get together and discuss:Team rolesWhat is the job of each of the people in the group?What they like about picture booksThe following questions may help get the discussing going: What are my favourite picture books? Why do I like these particular books? What types of stories appeal to both adults and children? How do writers keep their stories simple yet clever? How do the words and illustrations work together?

The group needs to create their own page on the class wiki to share these ideas – this could be a discussion forum

The illustrative process

Give students the handout taken from ‘Reading the Visual – written and illustrated children’s literature’, pp. 139-150. Make sure figure 5.1 is covered up when photocopying.

Instruct students to read the information contained in the handout, and in small groups, synthesise the information. In groups of 3-4, create a poster/visual representation of the illustrative process.

What roles are involved? What steps need to be taken? What order to the steps need to be done in?

Shaun Tan ‘The Red Tree’ – 6 copies6 copies of each in A3 size: 0809_randomthoughts_js.doc

0809_visual-wordsplash_js.doc0809_observemeaning_js.docM. Anstey & G. Bull, ‘Reading the Visual – written and illustrated children’s literature’

Coloured poster paperTextas, glue/tape

AUTHOR/ILLUSTRATOR visit www.bookedout.com.au

Choose an author/illustrator to come to the school for a day through the ‘Booked Out’ speakers agency.

The author can show the students examples of their work and explain the processes that illustrators go through to produce a book.

If possible, allow the students to work in their groups on their book, and the illustrator can act as a mentor for the groups, discussing ideas and illustrative styles and offering suggestions.TIP: Don’t forget to invite the author/illustrator onto the class wiki! They could be a valuable mentor for the groups and provide an expert assessment of the completed picture books.

Time allowance for completion of picture books: approx 8 weeks.

Rationale: the students need to be given enough time to go through the processes that have been modelled for them. They need to be able to go through the following processes as a group, which are re-evaluated and repeated: Brainstorming Drafting Evaluating Publishing to wiki Reflecting on working in a team

How students can show evidence of effective team work on their wiki pages: Setting up wiki pages for the task/communication & collaboration Audio files Video clips Photographs Discussion forum Self reflection – page on wiki, surveys/questions Shared calendar (eg. Google calendars)

Assessment Criteria

Using a real world audience for a text is an effective way to judge it – criteria is needed for the audience/s to fill in after hearing the books and this can be negotiated with the class. One way to do it is to visit a local primary school and read the books to them (digitally on an IWB would work well) or to visit a junior (yr 7) class and read to them. After each story the students can fill in a criteria sheet evaluating how much they enjoyed the story and giving scores for each which can then be added up to get a percentage mark for each book.

Mp3 voice recorders

Digital cameras/Flip Out video recorders

Criteria Sheet Example:

Topic: What does a good picture book have?

This can be a discussion forum topic on the class wiki where students can discuss the elements that make a good picture book.

Alternatively, students can form small groups and discuss the topic and create a checklist/criteria sheet to judge picture books by. The teacher can collect all the criteria and compile them into a final copy for use.

Publishing student work – works can be scanned electronically page by page and saved as .pdf files. www.lulu.com

These can be uploaded straight into lulu.com and printed. Alternatively, these can be scanned and printed and bound by the library. Either way, they should be displayed in the library and possibly catalogued for students to borrow and share.

Scanner, printer, binder

Written Exam

The students can write an essay as a summative assessment task at the completion of the unit. All of the class work/activities they have done throughout the unit should be on the wiki for student reference. The teacher and students who are comfortable with the topic can create vodcasts and podcasts (video and sound files) and publish them on the wiki – these can serve as revision notes for the class. The essay will be written in 100 minutes under exam conditions and students will be allowed 1 A4 single-sided page of notes.

Part 9Reflection: Complete the Notebook graphing activity again, asking students to explain who they think makes the meanings in texts.

Have they changed their mind? What have they learnt in the unit about this?

A page can set up on the wiki with a discussion forum where students can discuss what they learnt throughout the unit, and upload video/sound files of them talking about what they learnt.

Students can write a 100 word reflection of what they learnt in the unit, which they e-mail to the teacher or upload onto the wiki in a designated area. The teacher then copies all of the students reflections and pastes it into wordle ( www.wordle.net) where the reflections become a visual diagram showing the words students used and how frequently. This will show the common words largest and the least common words smallest, so you can see the messages in what they wrote.

Part 10 Evaluation:Students complete a PMI chart evaluating the Pluses, Minuses and Interesting parts of the unit, with a recommendation for changes to be made.