Demonstrate broad knowledge and understanding of the impact of culture, cultural identity and linguistic background on the education of students from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds.

Standard 1.4

Rationale:
Aboriginal people live in diverse and rich communities. This is reflected in the language, culture, history and world view that each Aboriginal learner brings to the classroom. Therefore, it is important that I examine and modify my teaching and learning practices to ensure that all students are successful learners. It is important that I develop programs that recognise, reflect and build on the knowledge, skills and understanding that learners bring to school as a means of improving educational outcomes. For this reason, I have chosen to include a unit of work that demonstrates my ability to engage students in meaningful and purposeful learning activities. This unit emphasises the importance of using learners' skills, knowledge and understandings as a starting point for teaching and learning, and then negotiating the learning activities required to reach an end point. The strategies used for teaching include: modelling, role-plays, visual clues, goal setting, use of real examples, charts, learners practicing in a variety of ways, and peer and teacher feedback.  

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Artifact 1:

Unit of Work: From Story to Big Book

Overview

Students produce a big book retelling and illustrating the Dreaming story The Milky Way. Students learn about features of Aboriginal Dreaming stories and art, and develop skills in retelling stories by identifying key words and main points, developing an organisational structure, and using editing skills to improve writing. Students construst illustrations to match the text, using collage. Students present and read their big book at
School Assembly.





Dreaming Story: The Milky Way

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Links to National Curriculum Priorities

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander priority provides opportunities for all learners to deepen their knowledge of Australia by engaging with the world’s oldest continuous living cultures. All students will develop an awareness and appreciation of, and respect for the literature of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, including storytelling traditions (oral narrative) as well as contemporary literature. Students will be taught to develop respectful critical understandings of the social, historical and cultural contexts associated with different uses of language and textual features.


Negotiating the Unit

I asked students to use the central idea of making stories to select appropriate activities that could be included in the project, for example, making a book or video, reading stories, writing, editing. I discussed the idea of presenting their work to parents/caregivers. Students decided to focus on one genre throughout the unit, so they were asked to discuss the different kinds of narratives they know. Students decided to study Dreaming stories, and to make a big book retelling a Dreaming story.


Activities for the unit

• Reading and listening to Dreaming stories to identify key words and main points.
• Identifying aspects of Dreaming stories.
• Retelling stories in oral and written form, and publishing a retell on the computer.
• Developing editing skills to improve writing.
• Recording titles of stories that have been read as a reading record.
• Creating a text for a big book.
• Creating artwork to illustrate the text for the big book.
• Organising a presentation for parents as celebration of the work completed.
  

Pedagogy

• Links to the work of Luke and Freebody (1999), The Four Resource Model.
  

General outcomes

Text and contexts

• Understand elements included in Dreaming stories, such as rules for living, relationship to the environment, and spirituality.
• Record key words and main points.
• Retell using correct sequence and detail.

Strategies

• Develop editing skills and explanation in own writing.
  

Designing in computing

• Improve layout and proofreading skills.

Arts practice

• Develop design and use of colour in illustrations.
• Identify aspects of language used in visual arts.
• Develop an appreciation of Aboriginal art.

Dreaming stories - identifying key words and main points

The Dreaming story, How the birds got their colours, was a good place to start. Students identified key words as they listened to the story and recorded them. This information was shared as a whole class. Main points were identified and recorded on charts to assist students with the sequencing of the story. The following chart demonstrates how key words and main points were recorded. This information provided the scaffolding to assist students in writing their retell. As a class, students then separated key words into adjectives, nouns and verbs. This showed the students the function of words and grammar in the text structure.

Assessment criteria

Students identifed key words and main points in the story.

How the birds got their colours

Key Words

• long, long ago
• Dreaming
• land
• animals, birds, black
• dove, grub, stick, hurt, sick, foot, pain
• swollen
• parrot, sharp, beak, burst, colours
• splashed, chest, wings, tail
• spots, stripes, all birds' colours
• crow - no colour

Main points

• in the Dreaming all the birds were black
• a dove landed on a stick and needed help
• all his mates helped except the black crow
• parrot burst the swollen foot
• all the birds became coloured except the crow who did not help
• dove thanked the parrot, flew away

Structuring a retell

When the snake bites the sun was used to continue developing students' skills in retelling Dreaming stories. Attention to structure and editing skills became the writing focus. Students listened to the story and recorded key words and main points. The class discussed how to structure a retell so that it included the important information and made sense.  Students retold the story orally to a partner and then wrote a draft of their retell. After the first draft was completed, strategies for editing were taught. The students used the following table to organise their retell.

Assessment criteria: Did students include a beginning, middle and end in the retell? Did students sequence the main points correctly?

Structure of a retell

Introduction
Beginning
Orientation


Middle







Ending
Conclusion

• How the story begins
• Time, characters, place, environment

• What happens
• Identify the number of events (a paragraph for each main point)
• Tell the events in order (sequence correctly)
• Include explanation to develop detail

• Tell how the story ends

Editing a student's work

With permission, a student's work was used to model how editing can help improve writing. The editing process was modelled on the whiteboard so students could identify and discuss changes that could be made. We progressed through the following steps:

• lines were numbered on the student's text to refer to the content of each line
• students were asked to identify the beginning, middle and end of the text with large coloured brackets using a whiteboard marker
  
• symbols were introduced for students to use in editing their own work
• students were asked to identify aspects that could be improved on or added to.

Students then used this process to edit their own work, which they published on the computer.

Features of Dreaming stories

A range of Dreaming stories were identified through class discussion after listening to and reading several stories. This helped students to understand the structure and identify important aspects that needed to be included in retells. I asked students to make a list of the various features and categorise them accordingly. Emphasis was placed on the following features:

Time

Environment



Problem Solving

Rules

Lessons
Characters
Beliefs
Events



Explanation

• Many stories begin with 'Long, long, ago...'

• The natural environment provides the setting for nearly all stories.
• The environment described is unique to a particular region.
• Stories include the environment as a very important part.
• Caring for the natural environment is a part of the Dreaming.
• Decisions are made as a group where all agree
• One character is given the role of representing the groups' decision and starting the problem solving process.
• About caring for the environment, living together, how to behave towards each other as adults and children.
• Events that occur ensure that there is a lesson to be learned.
• Can be animals, people and spiritual ancestors who have power.
• What the characters believe and value is important to their culture.
• Characters can create problems.
• Cause and effect occurs in a lot of stories.
• Resolution is through meetings and group decision making.
• Dreaming stories can explain something through a series of events, for example, how the birds got their colours.
  

From Dreaming story to big book

The Milky Way was used as the Dreaming story to read, retell and develop into a big book. Visual presentation was an important focus, as students need to visualise and illustrate scenes, as well as write about them. The following activities were included:

Assessment criteria: Did students identify and include the main points in sequence? Did students use conjunctions to link ideas and expand on main points?

• Identifying the main points
• Writing the retell
• Improving expanation in the text
• Identifying scenes
• Identifying visual aspects and consistency
• Decisions about artwork
• Drawing the scene
• Matching text and illustration
• The end point - celebration and presentation

Learning benefits

Students benefited from displaying their work and developing their presentation skills. They also had the opportunity to consolidate and share with pride what they learnt. All students felt like they had a purpose for being involved in the unit. Negotiating the curriculum with students gave them a sense of ownership of the activities. Showcasing student work gave them the added incentive to do their best. Learning activities resulted in improved reading, writing and presentation skills.