ALIA CYS Pre Book Week Extravaganza Presentation
Introduction:
I teach Year 7 Information Literacy Skills and Narrative Structure at a comprehensive girls school in the western suburbs of Sydney. What I do in that program is mash up the concepts of information literacy and narrative discourse with the purpose of revealing deep knowledge in good stories and deep stories in good knowledge. What is important is that we find the knowledge and stories that fit us as individuals and consequentially empower us. Students learn to embrace pluralism in this age when the spectre of fundamentalism crowds around.
Let me give you an example of finding new meaning in old fact. The proof that light travels faster than sound is recognised when we realise that a person can appear bright until we hear them speak. And my students have learned that when Polly put the kettle on it was because she had nothing else to wear.
I teach that language has a variety of structures known as text types to convey meaning:
• Report of how things are,
• Recount of what happened,
• Procedure as method and recipe,
• Explanation of the cause of change,
• Exposition of the argument and debate,
• Response to art, music and literature,
• Personal and expressive poetry and lyrics and
• Narrative, the most sophisticated form with elements of orientation, complication, sequencing, resolution and coda.
The narrative as I teach it is the only text type which has the power to make us transform ourselves as we tell it. We start by reading the narrative and then the narrative reads us. In this way the past and the future are at our command.
That is the context for my brief discussion of 4 titles on the young adult short list.
In order to pick up some techniques of how a Stage 4 or Stage 5 English teacher would use the titles I read, I asked my special English teacher to record a video for me. I present Ouranita Karadimas. (See the video to the right called Loving Literature))
Ideas from video presentation:
Stage 4:
Using short stories as a springboard for their own narratives
Example: “The girl who married a fly” by Chris Wheat
Creative exercises in a number of modes and media as follows:-
• develop pictorial storyboard from the main events in the story
• class develop a script from the short story and resource and perform
• class develop picture book from the short story
• speeches and monologues from the short story
Stage 5:
Example: “The Divine Wind” by Garry Disher
Creative exercises in a number of modes and media as follows:-
• Chapter headings significance – pictorial title page for each of the chapters
• Mind maps – themes of the novel
• Designing front and back covers
• Reading own blurbs
• Review of novel in the form of TV interview – mimic book shows and interviewers – empathy with composer
• Big ICT research unit to give context in literature and embed understanding of narrative
• Powerpoint presentation of contextual study
Red Spikes “Baby Jane” by Margo Lanagan
Synopsis: A family is settling down for the night camping in the bush. As child Dylan drifts into sleep he hears the sounds of a howling animal and remembers some imaginary animals and his older sister’s pregnancy. They meld into his dream and he becomes a midwife for a queen.
Themes:
Toys,
Childbirth,
Dreams.
Activities:
• develop pictorial storyboard from the main events in the story
• class develop a script from the short story and resource and perform
• class develop picture book from the short story
• speeches and monologues from the short story
Don’t Call Me Ishmael by Michael Gerard Bauer
Synopsis: Insecure 14 year old Ishmael was named after the narrator of Moby Dick. He doesn’t know how to deal with the bully Barry Bagsley. Offbeat James Scobie arrives looking like a new target for Barry but has quick wits and courage and becomes an unlikely ally. James sets up a debating team and against his inclinations Ishmael joins. Crisis time arrives and Ishmael pulls through!
Themes:
Bullying,
Self esteem,
Relationships,
Courage,
Public speaking.
Activities:
• Chapter headings significance – pictorial title page for each of the chapters
• Mind maps – themes of the novel
• Designing front and back covers
• Reading own blurbs
• Review of novel in the form of TV interview – mimic book shows and interviewers – empathy with composer
• Big ICT research unit to give context in literature and embed understanding of narrative
• Powerpoint presentation of contextual study
My Big Birkett by Lisa Shanahan
Synopsis: 14 year old Gemma Stone is a change of life baby observing her older sister going through the wedding cycle. Gemma is yet to have her first kiss. At the same time the Tempest is being run as the school play. Gemma gets to play Miranda to the handsome yuppie Nick Lloyd’s Ferdinand, the boy she is infatuated with. Then the delinquent rebel Raven De Head who comes from the wrong end of town enters as Caliban. The play is a success, Gemma gets her first kiss and the wedding has a happy ending! But there is darkness and death on the edge of town.
Themes:
Birds and Origami,
Relationships,
The school play,
The river; rich vs. poor,
Wedding culture.
Activities:
• Chapter headings significance – pictorial title page for each of the chapters
• Mind maps – themes of the novel
• Designing front and back covers
• Reading own blurbs
• Review of novel in the form of TV interview – mimic book shows and interviewers – empathy with composer
• Big ICT research unit to give context in literature and embed understanding of narrative
• Powerpoint presentation of contextual study
The Red Shoe by Ursula Dubosarsky
Synopsis: It is Sydney, April 1954. Three sisters aged 6, 11 and 15 living in Palm Beach with Mum and Uncle Paul. Memories of the war with the Japanese and Vera Lynn’s songs haunt the grown ups. Big black cars are coming and going from the holiday home next door and an air of mystery and the possibility of a spy emerge. Each has a consciousness of is what is happening around them. Newspaper items from the Sydney Morning Herald present the key story of the defection of Vladimir Petrov and give contextual views of other events of the time. A visit to the Easter show is dangled but instead there is a visit to the State Theatre to see Roman Holiday. A dream like remembrance of a picnic where father is saved from suicide hovers in and out. The final act is the newspaper report of Mrs Petrov’s rescue.
Themes:
Easter & the Show
Siblings
Petrov Affair
World War II and its aftermath.
Mental Illness
The beach
Activities:
• Chapter headings significance – pictorial title page for each of the chapters
• Mind maps – themes of the novel
• Designing front and back covers
• Reading own blurbs
• Review of novel in the form of TV interview – mimic book shows and interviewers – empathy with composer
• Big ICT research unit to give context in literature and embed understanding of narrative
• Powerpoint presentation of contextual study
Teachers notes
And finally the Red Shoe and My Story. The facts may not be correct but this is the emotional truth that fits into me.
I asked my mother what she remembered of April 1954. She replied that it was hazy, she felt like she was in prison, but most of all she rememered the powerful image of Evdokia Petrov’s shoe stranded on the tarmac as she was dragged onto the plane. My father’s memory was more immediate and he seemed to have to meditate on it. “Menzies was on a pogrom of the communists” he said as though speaking from a distance. At the time my parents were building a fibro in Gymea. All that was up was one room and the chimney. “I stacked all the party pamphlets I had into the fireplace and burnt them all. The heat was so intense it cracked the hearth. It cracked the hearth”
In another part of Sydney my grandmother was nursing a man from Essex . He had fought the Japanese in New Guinea and come down with a debilitating tropical disease. And now he was fighting alcoholism and losing the battle.
Six years later the Englishman was dead and my grandmother had remarried a would be businessman. The memory comes to me of a photograph of her done up in finery and sitting in a trade stand over there in the corner of Marrickville Town Hall. Vera Lynn sings “A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square”. Good night Gram.
