English Textual Concepts: Point of View

In my teaching adventures last year I had the privilege to teach a Year 8 class with additional learning needs and I can say (and have probably already said on this blog before) that it was one of the most rewarding teaching/learning experiences I've had so far in my career. Teaching such a diverse range of little people helped me re-frame a lot of teaching strategies in a way that would make them more accessible and inclusive for those with learning difficulties. At this point I had already been experimenting with integrating the English Textual Concepts into my programming for a few years and the resources below represent one of these forays in relation to the aforementioned Year 8 class. 

For some additional context: the English Textual Concepts have been in development for quite some time. When I first heard about them at the 2014 ETA Conference they were referred to as the 'English Concept Continuum' and after this it popped up in various English-related professional learning scenarios and I kind of made it my mission to attend as much of PD sessions as possible. These days it is now being taught at Western Sydney University and is endorsed by the Department of Education as an invaluable resource for English programming - it isn't a mandatory part of being an English teacher but it's certainly a helpful one! When I get stuck in the formative stages of programming I find it's useful to have a squizz at the Textual Concepts and locate a concept that might work as a way to pull everything together.

So, anyway, I wanted to teach Point of View to my Year 8 class because I'd noted some of the students struggling to comprehend how writers establish a relationship between narrator and audience. Here's what the framework says in regards to teaching this particular concept to Stage 4:

Point of View - Stage 4

Students understand that choice of point of view shapes the meanings, the values and the effect of the text.

Students learn that

• a narrator can tell a story, comment on a story or break out from the story to address the responder, directly
• point of view is a device for persuading 
• point of view directs the responder to the values in the text

The Qinling Panda, with its brown fur, is one of the most endangered mammals in the world

Animal Conservation

At the start of 2017 the unit my school was teaching Year 8 focused on endangered animals and text types, which works well with Point of View if you want to look at how different text types utilise first, second and third person for particular effect. Anyway, here's a breakdown of the lesson:

1. Start the PowerPoint Presentation on Point of View. On the second slide brainstorm with students the language used for first, second and third person (IE. 'I, 'Me', 'Myself' for first person; 'You', 'Your', 'You're' for second person; 'He', 'She', Proper Nouns', 'His, etc. for third person). This explicitly identifies and classifies the sort of language the students will be looking for in the next part of the lesson.
2. Students are then shown three pieces of writing about the American Bison in the PowerPoint Presentation; hand out these extracts as a separate sheet and have them highlight the language that differentiates the pieces as first, second and third person.
3. On the 6th slide students are asked to consider the implications of how point of view affects the relationship between writer and responder. Think about: the first person text could be either non-fiction or fiction, however, the third person feels more resolutely like fiction and the second person example moves into a different realm altogether (it can be seen as an instructional text of some kind, perhaps even a travel guide). The questions build upwards ala Bloom's Taxonomy, starting with the 'what' questions before asking students to engage with some basic evaluation (which version appeals the most and why?)
4. The last slide gives students a first person piece of writing that they must rewrite as third person. It's a fairly straightforward activity that allows a struggling class a reasonable degree of success. The scaffolding of analysis before this final activity should also prepare students to discuss their piece of writing afterwards in relation to the way shifting point of view can help the responder to see the content of the text in new ways.

Sometimes I think we (the teacher) underestimate the value of explicitly teaching what we might take as obvious - there are some students who come to high school with a very real need for continued support in developing key comprehension skills that some students can already access unconsciously. In any event, it certainly doesn't hurt to let students achieve success in regards to exploring Point of View before moving forward to more advanced English processes.