Introduction

This literacy sequence is suited to grade four and has been developed around the book The Two-Hearted Numbat by Ambelin Kwaymullina and Ezekial Kwaymullina. The book tells the story of a numbat who had one heart that was a stone, which made him strong and brave and a second heart that was a feather which made him gentle and soft. The numbat decides to choose between which heart he should have forever but in the end, decides on using both hearts at the same time so that he has the qualities of both hearts always. Through using this book as a resource, the sequence will focus on building comprehension strategies as well as the skills associated with the construction of genre, specifically language features and text structures. This literacy sequence will eventuate in a play where students can demonstrate their knowledge through dance, music and speaking. This sequence will address the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures priority.

Sequence 1: Frontloading

Teaching Focus 1

Strategic Questions

Whole Class Activities to Engage the Students

Follow on activities (either small group or independent)

Assessment Resources

To find out whether students can identify key features of Indigenous stories.

What similarities between these stories can you see? What differences between these stories can you see? What can you tell me about the illustrations?Is there a ‘recipe’ to these stories and if so what? Who are the main characters in the stories?

The students will sit on the floor while the teacher reads How the Birds got their Colours by Mary Albert. Students will also watch the video Why Koala has a Stumpy Tail. Teacher will discuss the two stories (See Strategic Questions) and as a class, create a mind map on the board of the similarities they found.

Following on from that, the teacher will give the students details of an Indigenous story that has not been written yet and ask the students to draw the first page of the story with an introductory line/s that would complement the picture.

Teacher will listen to the student’s views and responses that were expressed during the class discussion as well as taking note of how the students have created the front page of the story ie. Have the students included features that are typical of Aboriginal stories

How the Birds got their Colours (Mary Albert 2011)

Why Koala has a Stumpy Tail (Martha Hamilton 2012)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itszep0duwI

Teaching Focus 2

Strategic Questions

Whole Class Activities to Engage the Students

Follow on Activities(either small group or independent)

Assessment Resources

To build an understanding of the literal and inferred meaning in the text as an introduction to comprehension strategy

What do the hearts represent? Would most of us use more than one heart at once? What might those hearts be? When might we use our stone heart? When might we use our feather heart?

Students would sit on the floor while teacher reads The Two-Hearted Numbat by Ambelin and Ezekial Kwaymullina. As a class, they would then discuss the book and the meaning behind the pictures and what they represent. (See Strategic Questions)

Individually, students will then complete a cloze passage that summarises the story that was just read and asks students to fill in the blanks.

Teacher will observe discussion responses to gauge whether the students understood the meaning behind the story and the pictorial representations. The cloze passage (See Appendix 1) will also be analysed to check whether students were able to fill it in with appropriate words.

The Two Hearted Numbat (Ambelin and Ezekial Kwaymullina 2008)

Sequence 2: Explicit Teaching

Explicit Teaching Session 1

Introduction As a class, brainstorm the different features that the imaginative narrative The Two-Hearted Numbat has such as a title, beginning where the author sets the scene and so on. The brainstorm should be left up on the board so that the students may refer back to it. Discuss the importance of each part.

AUSVELS link: (ACELY1690)Elaboration Together as a class, the teacher and

students will write an imaginative narrative using all the text features. They will go back over what they have written to make sure it makes sense and to make sure they have included everything.

Practice The students will then write an imaginative narrative with appropriate language features and text conventions of an Indigenous imaginative narrative. The students may refer to the brainstorm ideas on the board.AUSVELS link: (ACELT1794)

Review Once completed, students will then swap their stories with a partner and will use highlighters to highlight the different text features that have been used as well as the appropriate structural features. They will be marking/editing their partners work based on the brainstorm on the board and as such should have all aspects included.

Resources The Two Hearted Numbat by Ambelin and Ezekial Kwaymullina

Explicit Teaching Session 2

Introduction Together as a class, the teacher and students will go through some groups of sentences (See Appendix 2) that will be up on the board. A key word or phrase of the sentence will be covered so that students will have a chance to predict what the missing word would be. The teacher will be there to guide them and prompt them with questions.

Elaboration With the class, the teacher will look at page 3 of The Two-Hearted Numbat and go through each sentence one at a time. The teacher will then model good comprehension strategies such as inferring and asking questions from the text. AUSVELS link: (ACELY1692)

Practice Students are to create their own storyboard

using Indigenous type illustrations and language features commonly found in Aboriginal stories. They then have to create a set of 5 inferential and literal comprehension questions pertaining to their story.AUSVELS link: (ACELT1607)

Review For this part, students will pair up with one of their peers. They then have to read through their peer’s story and answer the comprehension questions that their peers have also created. The partners will then swap their work back and give their partner a mark out of 5 according to the number of questions that they got right.

Resources The Two-Hearted Numbat by Ambelin and Ezekial Kwaymullina

Sequence 3: Developing a multimodal response

Whole class activities to prepare/support the students for what will be expected of them:

As a class, students will use The Two-Hearted Numbat as a resource for a play. The teacher will assign someone to play Numbat, Eldest Numbat, the narrator, the dingo, the magpie, the other numbats, the heart of stone and the heart of a feather. The students will retell the story that they have been looking at over the weeks as a play. The teacher will then have the ability to freeze the play as they please and point out the drama skills that the students would be using such as voice projection.AUSVELS link: (ACELY1687)

Follow on activities: - Either small group or independent:

In small groups, the students will be given either The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo or The Magic Brocade A Tale of China to rehearse as a play. This will allow them to work independent of the teacher as a practice for the assessment task. Students will also be encouraged to take note of the type of genre that their story falls into and as such use tone and expression that would be befitting.

Assessment: This assessment will take the form of a role play whereby students have to direct, narrate and act out the story of How the Birds Got Their Colours. The idea of this role play is to make the audience feel like they are reading an interactive version of the book. As such, one of the students will be playing the part of the ‘reader’ and will be able to stop the play using a signal, to point out different features in the play. Students will have to create their own costumes and props and they will perform their final piece at assembly. The students will be assessed on how they use music, dance and storytelling to convey the appropriate conventions used in Indigenous storytelling. AUSVELS links: (ACELY1689)

Resources: The Two Hearted Numbat by Ambelin and Ezekial Kwaymullina

The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo can be accessed at http://web.archive.org/web/20051223172044/http://users.aol.com/rcswallow/

GreenKangaroo.html

The Magic Brocade A Tale of China can be accessed at http://www.aaronshep.com/rt/RTE26.html

Part 2: Rationale

This sequence is designed to suit a grade four level as it was centred on the book The Two-Hearted Wombat by Amber and Ezekial Kwaymullina (2008). The Two-Hearted Wombat provides for the literacy needs of a students in grade four in a number of ways. Firstly, a language feature of Indigenous Australian narratives is that they use simple language when telling the stories. This makes the book flow well when accompanied with the illustrations but also allows the audience to focus on the meaning hidden in the words and the illustrations. As text comprehension was a focus in this literacy sequence, it was important to find a book that could provide opportunities to point out literal and inferred meaning in the text without unnecessarily getting the students caught up with the vocabulary of the text. Secondly, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and cultures priority is the cross-curriculum priority that was chosen to be focused on. This was largely due to the fact that Indigenous Australian history is integral to Australian history and students at a grade four level will be able to appreciate the wide variety of Australian children’s literature about Indigenous Australians. Students will also be able to pick up on the different text structure and language and visual features that are apparent in Indigenous Australian books and as such be able to compare the nuances of the genre. It is the unique features of Indigenous Australian literature that teachers and students would find motivating and in turn inspire them to “Create literary texts that explore students’ own experiences and imagining” (AusVELS 2013). This AusVELS link which can be found in the literature strand of the English domain captures the inspiration that Indigenous Australian texts turn in you. If The Two-Hearted Numbat was not read aloud, it could be swapped with the video called Why Koala Has a Stumpy Tail which was resourced in the first sequence. This animated story could be used as it is more accessible to the students and does not need to be read aloud. The story is also an Aboriginal one and it has simple language that will not complicate matters when trying to focus on literacy aspects. The above literacy sequence could be used with most Indigenous Australian children’s literature as they all have similar text structures and language features. Spender (as cited in Winch et al. 2010 p. 401) states that “[e]quality of access should be the aim”. As such, the above literacy sequence has been created so that it is interchangeable with a variety of resources. It is also due to this reason that the literacy sequence and the activities have been created to be very flexible so that they can be used to challenge students with a range of abilities as well as the students of different intellectual capabilities. For instance, in the first explicit teaching session, students were encouraged to write their own story using typical Aboriginal text structure and language and visual features. This activity allows those who are more capable in writing to extend themselves as much as possible and not be limited by too much criteria. It also allows for those who are

not as capable in writing to explore and not worry too much about how well they write as the language used is relatively simple. This activity also allows those students who are better at illustrating to express themselves in a creative way. Similarly, the activities have been created using many different styles such as the storyboard or the play which in turn allows those with different strengths to step up and be assessed in a different way. Activities such as the cloze passage (See Appendix 1) are flexible in the way they are created and delivered to students and as such, allows the teacher to adapt it based on the capabilities of the students in their class. The teaching approaches that have been used in this literacy sequence are quite specific in the way that they allow teachers to guide students. One of the teaching approaches used is modelling. Winch et al. (2012 p. 383) states that “[s]tudents learn about the conventions of writing from the models they see and practice”. Students benefit greatly from being able to see exactly how a text is structured. This was demonstrated in the first explicit teaching session where the teacher would model how to write an imaginative narrative while using all the appropriate text and language features. Students are then able to work independently to create their own unique version. Explicit teaching was the main approach used in this sequence. Explicit teaching is the “[c]areful examination of literacy interactive practices in the context of classroom… [to provide] information about teaching practice [which] leads to important conclusions about instructional efficacy for all students” (Edwards-Groves 2002). This approach greatly helps teachers to find each student’s strengths and areas of need and as such develop their teaching practice to be more suited to the needs of the students. This allows for flexibility in the classroom and with lessons as well as the ability to provide equitable education for all your students. This in turn provides the most valuable learning for the students as well as the most efficient.

References

Edwards-Groves, C 2002, Connecting Students To Learning Through Explicit Teaching, retrieved 28/9/2014, http://www.myread.org/explicit.htm

Kwaymullina, A & Kwaymullina, E 2008, The Two-Hearted Numbat, Fremantle Press, Western Australia

Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority 2013, English, Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, retrieved 28/9/2014, http://ausvels.vcaa.vic.edu.au/English/Curriculum/F-10#level=4

Winch, G, Johnston, R, March, P, Ljungdahl, L & Holliday, M 2010, Literacy Reading, Writing and Children’s Literature (4th edn), Oxford University Press, Victoria

Appendix 1

The Two-Hearted Numbat

By Ambelin and Ezekial Kwaymullina

There once lived a _________ who had _________ _________.

One heart was a _________ and when he wore it, the other numbats expected him to be _________ and _________. The other heart was a _________ and when he wore it, it made the numbat _________ strong and ________ but the other numbats did _________ not like him.

Numbat decided to choose _________ _________ to wear all the time. On the way to the _________ __________, Numbat met a dingo. Numbat could not pass the dingo until he realised that he needed to look at the _________ from a different point of ______ and so Numbat put on his _________ heart.

Whilst wearing his feather heart, Numbat was faced with _________ situation and so he eventually decided to use his ___________ ____________ which gave him __________ and he jumped over the river and headed into the Deep Bush.

In the end, Numbat realised that he needs to be both ________ and _________ to be his true self.

Appendix 2

One hot and sunny day, Peter and his friends went to the beach for a swim.

The planes were roaring as they hit the landing strip. Judy was incredibly sad. Her father stood at the departure gate and soon she would have to say goodbye.

I stood outside, dripping with water. When was this rain going to stop?

Heidi was furious! How could she have failed this test?

Key: words highlighted in yellow are to be covered