Researching for History Curriculum

Thanks Penrith Library!

I thought I'd share with you today one of my current methods for researching and writing History curriculum. There's no single way to program, of course, but I do know that if someone had outlined a few methodologies to me back in my university days then it might have made things a little easier. I've experimented with various ways of writing programs for teaching and I guess that 2020-21 was the moment where I finally became happy with an approach to researching for the subject of History. So I thought I'd share it!

There were a few contributing factors that helped me arrive at the method I now use... 

• In 2019 I was commissioned to write some chapters for the Cambridge History Transformed series. In order to feel comfortable in providing a baseline from which other teachers could work, I knew that I would have to undertake a considerable amount of research.
• At my new school I was placed onto Ancient History, a subject I hadn't taught for at least 9 years. For all intents and purposes I'm basically teaching it for the first time so I needed to refresh my approach.  
• I fortuitously attended some online PL conducted by the History Teachers' Association of NSW. This 'Introduction to Ancient History' module was run by Dennis Mootz, who highlighted the use of Excel Spreadsheets as a powerful aggregation tool for historians to use. 

My approach isn't revolutionary but I'm finding it increasingly useful and it's something I'll be teaching a variation of to my students for the upcoming Historical Investigation component of Ancient History. I'll also teach it when I next have a History Extension class. 

Step 1: Look at the syllabus. 

I start by reading through the part of the syllabus I'll be teaching. In this case, for example, it's the introductory Nature of Ancient History topic 'The Treatment and Display of Human Remains'. 

Then I code the content dot points within the syllabus for my own reference, using the following schema: 

• 1 = The Nature of Ancient History as it's the first module in the Preliminary course. 
• 6 = The Treatment and Display of Human Remains as it's the 6th topic within the module. 
• The four main dot points within this topic are then labelled A, B, C, D.
• Any sub-dot points within these are labelled with a further number, EG. 1, 2, 3, 4. 

Here is what it looks like after I code it...

Students investigate:

• The condition of the human remains and how they were preserved, discovered and/or removed from where they were found 1-6-A
• The methods and results of scientific analysis (dating of finds and forensic techniques) and modern preservation of the remains 1-6-B
• The significance of the human remains and other sources, for examples written, for an understanding of the life and times in which they lived, including: 1-6-C
• The social status of individuals 1-6-C1
• The beliefs and practices of the society 1-6-C2
• The health of ancient populations 1-6-C3
• The nature of the environment 1-6-C4
• The ethical issues relevant to the treatment, display and ownership of the remains, for example the use of invasive methods of scientific analysis 1-6-D

Step 2: Read.

I recently read a tweet where the poet Eileen Chong made reference to a creative process figuratively labelled as 'wool-gathering'. This refers to the necessary time that writers need to spend on reading, gathering up the intellectual resources that will allow for creation. In preparing to teach an area of history I will gather together any available resources I can find, place them in a stack on my table, and start reading. 

Step 3: Raw notetaking. 

I find that, without focus, examining history can become quite overwhelming. Reading one thing will lead to another and I'll be fascinated by the minutiae of particular events only to realise (when it's too late) that it has no relevance to what I need to teach. This is where the above coding from Step 1 comes into play.

Using an excel spreadsheet, I will keep one eye on the syllabus content points and make notes on what I'm reading. Each separate entry is coded with one of the 8 codes from the above syllabus. This is what it looks like:

Click to enlarge.

The columns are as follows:

• Information: My notes from the source in question. This can be a summary, or a quote, or a suggestion.
• Key Word: In something like this topic it's useful to be able to separate the entries geographically as the plan is to examine significant bodies from different parts of the world (EG. Bog Bodies from Europe, Mungo Man from Australia, etc.).
• Reference: This lets me know the source I've used. I keep another tab in the Excel spreadsheet running to collect together my sources as a proper bibliography. 
• Page Number: So I can follow up in case I come back to the entry and realise I need more context, or need to check if I've quoted something correctly. After all, I don't want Keith Windschuttle to come after me (that's a joke for the History Extension teachers).
• Syllabus: The coding from Step 1. This becomes most important in the next step.
• Format: The type of source it's from. This can help me evaluate how I plan to use the information.
• Category: A categorising column additional to the Key Word column can be useful when it comes to sorting the document afterwards, in case there are different ways of ordering the information (EG. By culture/body rather than by geography).

Step 4: Sort.

The final step before I start programming my unit (in other words, planning out my sequence of lessons and populating it with resources) is to take all the raw information and make some sense out of it. This is a simple but powerful step where the spreadsheet is re-sorted by using the coding. All the entries are then reorganised in order of the syllabus, allowing me to work through it methodically. 

I then move onto creating my unit of work. Recently, for example, while creating a unit for the Boudicca Case Study, I've been able to refer back to all my entries on Boudicca's representation through history and use this to create a lesson focused on just this one aspect of the syllabus. It's been incredibly useful. 

And that's it. I have other ways of using the spreadsheet but I think this will do for today :)

Introducing Year 7 to the Concept of Literature

While teaching, I find myself coming back to English over and over again and thinking about what the discipline is and why we teach it. Looking at the NSW syllabus document and examining the content points becomes useful because I can use it to reframe how I approach things. It gives me ideas about other 'ways into' the subject. If I get stuck while programming a unit of work I'll keep bouncing back to the outcomes and looking at the content points, which contain loads of ideas embedded in them. This also seems to be one of the most effective pieces of advice to give pre-service and beginner English teachers who find themselves stuck for ideas when lesson planning. 

On top of this, we also have the English Textual Concepts, which act as a synthesis of the major ideas and methods that have come to exemplify English. These can be incredibly useful when designing an overall unit of work but also have merit when looking at singular lesson activities.

When moving from Primary to Secondary school, students will need to be introduced to English in a new way - a more developed way that will hopefully sustain their growth as critical thinkers and challenge them by placing them in that 'zone of proximal development'. I've been thinking about this and how it can be scaffolded for students with varying degrees of literacy and other additional learning needs. How, for example, can the concept of Literary Value be introduced to Year 7, assuming that this terminology has not yet been mentioned to them in a Stage 3 context?

I think the first step is to break down what 'Literary Value' means in wording that the average Year 7 student will understand. Part of this is reframing the concept in a way that has authentic meaning in a wider context, so I'll swap out 'Literary Value' here for 'Literature'. When I used to work in a bookstore, the term 'Literature' was recognisable as a term with its own connotations separate from 'General Fiction' - a distinction that also extends into the realms of literary criticism, publishing, marketing, and popular review categories in newspapers, magazines, websites, etc. Using this idea along with the English Textual Concepts descriptor for Stage 4-level Literary Value, we can arrive at a workable definition that looks like this:

Literature: Fictional written works, especially those considered to be of superior or lasting artistic merit.

Activity 1: The first step is to place this definition in the centre of a board. Rather than do a mindmap or brainstorm, the teacher should lead a discussion on what each constituent part of the definition means and annotate it. Students should copy the definition into their book first and then add the annotations as you go. This serves a dual purpose - it scaffolds and models the process of determining meaning, and it also teaches the skill of annotating which will become more useful to students as they get older and begin to interact with more demanding texts.

The parts you will need to discuss with students and annotate are as follows:

• What does 'fictional' mean?
• What does 'superior' mean? Who decides what is superior?
• What does 'artistic merit' mean?
• What does 'lasting' mean?
• Note also that 'especially' leaves the process open-ended - what one person determines to be 'literature' may be subjective.

Activity 2: Students can then be given a worksheet with six examples of written works, ones that they will hopefully recognise or for which they will at least understand the context. The worksheet scaffolds the process of determining what 'counts' as literature. You may need to read aloud some of the fine print on the book examples as they probably won't be large enough on a printout for students to see. You should also project it on the board so they can see it in colour (assuming your photocopy of the worksheet is in black and white). 

Focus the conversations around things like:

• The age of the book (IE. Is the book 'lasting' in that we still know about it after all this time?)
• Prizes the book has won ('Pulitzer Prize', 'Australian Children's Book of the Year')
• Is the book fiction or non-fiction?
• The last example, Wonder, will be interesting because a lot of students read it in Primary school. In their eyes, this will make it a 'classic' of sorts. This could lead to interesting discussions on whether it may one day be considered a classic in the future and therefore have lasting artistic merit. 

Activity 3: As always, try to get your students writing independently for a bit. Tell them to pick one literary text from the worksheet and write a few sentences explaining why they think it continues to have impact after such a long time (or will continue having impact into the future). 

You can find the worksheet here - Literature. 

Random Rules for Writing

NaNoWriMo

Late last year I threw myself into NaNoWriMo. If you're not aware, this stands for National Novel Writing Month and is a fun (fun?) exercise that favours quantity over quality. Madness, really, but for an English teacher it's a worthwhile activity. Have you ever encouraged students to use lightning writing strategies? I see it as being akin to that. 

This was my third attempt at NaNoWriMo. The first time, in about 2009, I barely wrote 2000 words before running out of steam. I spontaneously decided to write an Australian Gold Rush era novel about a bushranger who teams up with a Chinese miner to fight monsters. Then I realised that, without a plot or any substantial time for research, I was just punching words out into the dark, so I gave up. 

The second time was in 2016 and, perhaps learning from my mistakes, I opted to just journal about my memories. I got to about 25 000 words out of the required 50 000 word count. It was easier because I could approach things episodically and in a non-linear fashion. To be honest, I can't remember why I didn't get any further... it's most likely that I probably got too busy with work or just lost interest. 

In 2020 I was prompted by a friend to undertake the challenge again. Well! I managed about 30 000 words this time and then things got too busy again. I became a Head Teacher Teaching & Learning at a new school and filled in as relieving Head Teacher TAS/CAPA for Term 4 and, well, it was a tremendous experience and I had to put aside my NaNoWriMo project. Luckily, with not much doing in the holiday break before we go back, I've managed to get back to the novel and momentum has thankfully continued. 

Writing the Novel

In my life as an aspiring writer I've attempted to seriously write a novel two other times (outside of NaNoWriMo). The first one, which I undertook in my pre-teaching life, took me about ten years. By the time I had finished writing it my life had changed so much that I was no longer interested in it. I looked at it and decided that I appreciated the experience of putting it together but that it just wasn't me anymore. 

The second one was a much more ambitious attempt and remains unfinished - it fell by the wayside after I became a permanent teacher in 2014. I can see myself going back to it at some point but I'll no doubt completely rewrite what I've got. I had already switched from first person to third person while expanding my outline and I'm still unsure where I sit with the kind of narrative voice I want to use on this one. The world has also changed a lot since 2010 (when I started writing it) so there's that to think about too. 

Finding a Different Approach

So, for NaNoWriMo 2020, how was I going to manage writing an entire novel in a short space of time without boring myself? My first step was committing to a fictional novella. I've written a lot of sentences - in blogs, articles, textbooks, short stories, poetry - and I felt like I needed shake things up in my approach. So I came up with some random rules to stop myself from falling back on certain things. These were things that I either felt like I tended to rely on too much, or things that become roadblocks when I try to write. 

This is what I came up with:

• No direct speech. The only way I was to convey dialogue is through reported speech. 
• Each chapter reflects one day only.
• There can be no references made to the past. This includes referring back to anything that happened the day before. Each chapter only focuses on that one day.
• Maintaining a mixture of past/present tense to reflect the short distance of time between events portrayed and the subsequent writing of each journal entry. 
• Minimal reference to how the narrator is feeling about anything.
• Why have a compound sentence when two simple ones will do?
• Keep punctuation simplistic too. This means no hyphens, no ellipses, no brackets, and definitely no semi-colons!
  
• Each entry should make both direct and indirect references to the writing process employed by the narrator (rather than turning into a straightforward fictional narrative). 
• All of these rules are sacrosanct and must be stuck to for the entirety of the novel. They will never be broken. Except for the times when they are. 
  

I found that these rules became much more of a blessing than a restriction. I actually finished my first draft and I don't hate it :)

Top Reads for 2020!

I had a lot of time to read this year. It was the thing I filled the 'gaps' with, and something that kept me motivated. I can safely say that I read more in 2020 then I have in any other year. Of the 127 books and graphic novels that I read, the following 12 are my favourites; the ones that stood out most...

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx: One of my favourite reads of the last 5 years - such a great novel, funny and richly quirky and tragic and just beautifully constructed and written. I read it back in Autumn while walking by the sea, with the cold wind whipping up around me, and the weather felt perfectly attuned to the content of the novel. More than six months later I'm still thinking back on it and hoping to read something else like it. 

My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf: A perfect intersection of meticulous, exhaustive research and one person's unique insight into the formative years of one of America's most notorious serial killers. Derf Backderf deals with the material with sensitivity and integrity, and works incredibly hard to avoid veering into speculation. Intensely magnetic.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel: A wonderful, scary, hopeful, metatextual English teacher's dream of a post-apocalyptic novel. The author imagines a world struck down by a devastating pandemic (fancy that!) and adds layers of interlinked characters, multiple narratives that span decades, King Lear, and a fictional graphic novel-within-a-novel. Station Eleven took me four walks to read, and I would gladly read it again.

Lost Transmissions by Desirina Boskovich: This is a brilliant piece of counter-'canon' work that shines a light on an influential secret history of speculative fiction - the forgotten voices, the unsung artistic legends, the might-have-beens. Boskovich investigates the influence of science fiction on every aspect of pop culture - books, film, art, architecture, music, fashion - and presents the texts that slipped through the gaps or deserved more attention. It prompted me to seek out a bunch of new texts.

Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco: I was a teen when the Yugoslav Wars tore the Balkans apart. It was confusing, partly because '90s Australian media didn't know what to make of a war where Muslims were very clearly the victims. This non-fiction graphic novel makes an incredibly challenging and complex piece of recent history quite terrifyingly clear. 

The Voyage of QV66 by Penelope Lively: You may have noticed a few post-apocalyptic titles in this list. I read 15 such novels this year, and the ones that made it onto this list are the true stand-outs. The Voyage of QV66 takes a different angle in that it presents a post-apocalyptic vision of Britain where the animals have inherited a world mysteriously void of humans. It's a fascinating parable that also happens to be very entertaining, and is suitable for adults and children alike. 

The Transmigration of Bodies by Yuri Herrera: A hardboiled, neo-noir, dirty-as-malaria, Mexican crime novella with shades of intense social decay. Imagine Romeo & Juliet mixed with Dashiell Hammett in a favela. It's a really quick, gripping read too, and I ordered Herrera's previous novel straightaway after reading. 

Blacksad by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido: If you love detective fiction, film noir, intelligently-captured caricatures of incisive crime genre archetypes, or evocative artwork that conveys so much so perfectly, then you must read the graphic novel Blacksad. A great find for me this year :)

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin: I loved this. Ursula Le Guin demonstrates in this novel why she is widely considered one of the greatest sci-fi authors of all time. This carefully-written narrative offers an insightful, compelling, feminist vision of an androgynous society. Paradoxically of its time (the late '60s) and way ahead of its time. A+ effort.

Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton: I got completely hooked once I got past the disorientating opening and adjusted to the rhythm of the writing. Dalton knocks it completely out of the park with this epic and finely-observed Aussie bildungsroman. Great characters and writing - lives up to the hype!

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald: An astoundingly heartfelt interweaving of falconry, personal grief, and an investigation of the pained, repressed life of the great English author T. H. White. Helen McDonald's prose is as sharp as the hawk's beak. This is great memoir writing.

In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan: An eerie, strange, beautiful, enigmatic, post-apocalyptic classic of the 1960s. Possibly the best book I've read this year and one of the most unexpected. I was so inspired I created the artwork below, and I'm about to read it again!

And that's it!

Here are some other honourable mentions that would round out a 'Top 25' from 2020:

The 1950s counter-culture graphic novel memoir Cruisin' with the Hound by Spain Rodriguez, influential island-set graphic novel Streak of Chalk by Miguelanxo Prado, Kurt Vonnegut's political satire Mother Night, Afro-futurist Romeo & Juliet remake Prince of Cats by Ronald Wimberly, American gothic classic The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, Korean memoir Banned Book Club, Jules Verne's 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea, Italo Calvino's On a Winter's Night a Traveler..., Steinbeckesque graphic novel Kings in Disguise by Jim Vance and Dan Burr, the haunting Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, Flea's memoir Acid for the Children, the challenging epic A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James, and Waubgeshig Rice's First Nations-perspective on the end of the world, Moon of the Crusted Snow.

Poster Analysis #2: Ant-Man

Following on from last fortnight's analysis of The Jungle Book, here's another great poster that can be used for visual literacy with high school English classes. It isn't an official poster released by Marvel's marketing team but instead comes from a freelance designer, Thomas Walker. This, however, doesn't preclude it from analysis as it still has a lot going for it in terms of its elements working together towards a common promotional goal.

Here are some of the elements broken down...

Vector and Perspective: One of this poster's various striking design choices is the array of red and black points that come in from the left, bottom, and right sides of the poster's boundaries. Each one of these is an example of a vector, with the eye being drawn along these lines to a common point of interest - Ant-Man himself. The tapering of these lines, coupled with the way that the ant-shadow becomes smaller as we track it from the border inwards to the middle of the poster, creates a sense of perspective as well. 

Size: One of the themes of the poster is the diminutive size of the hero, which fittingly echoes the content of the film itself. The size of Ant-Man could be interpreted by the eye as a figure placed far away into the background and, while this is true, the aforementioned tapering perspective also helps to sell the idea that this is a three-dimensional view of a small figure. The ant-shadow provides a frame of reference for this size and conveys the idea that the hero is dwarfed by ants.

Salience: As mentioned in the previous blog entry, salience is a subjective matter whereby the viewer identifies the main visual item in the image's mise en scene. Students may choose either Ant-Man or the ant-shadow as the focal point (or something else?). Part of the fun of this will be in getting the students to justify their opinion by describing the impact that things like vectors or scale and size may have had on their verdict.

Shadow / Contrast: The stark white background provides enough contrast to ensure that Ant-Man stands out despite his smaller size. In addition to this, the shadow of the ant provides a contrasting counterpoint to all this white and balances the mise en scene from a design standpoint. The ant-shadow also plays a more symbolic role (albeit a really obvious piece of symbolism) in that it represents the lead character's connection to ants. The size of the ant-shadow further symbolises the extent of the hero's power too.

Colour Choice: The design choice of red and black for the tapered points is a no-brainer as it matches Ant-Man's costume. Generally speaking, the overall combination of red, black, and white can have more particular connotations. In Western culture, the colours black and red have the most sinister and 'evil' associations (death, darkness, blood, stop) and have historical ties to a range of evils both in reality (the Nazi Party) and in fiction (vampire cloaks, Darth Maul and the First Order in Star Wars, V for Vendetta's totalitarian regime, the bad guys in Tron, Mordor's colour palette in the Lord of the Rings films, House Bolton in Game of Thrones). It isn't much of a step from here to create a broader colour palette - this typically expands to include white and grey. So what do we make of the decision to create a hero using these traditionally diabolical colours? Well, for a start, the decision to costume Ant-Man in this way tracks back to the original comics from the 1960s. It isn't just super-villains who prefer this colour scheme - both Coca-Cola and the White Stripes also have a love for all things red, black, and white. It's a very eye-catching combination. Thematically though, we can take into account the idea that Marvel Film's Ant-Man starts as an anti-hero of sorts - he is an ex-con who has just served significant jail-time and he has a history of committing petty crime. Perhaps we can tie the colour choice for this character to the idea that he isn't your typical superhero? At the least, colour theory supports the combination of these colours as complimentary.

Dutch Angle: The poster uses a 'dutch' or tilted angle. This askew view is a popular directorial choice in the morally-grey film noir genre as well as narratives set in psychologically-complex or disturbed settings. We can interpret the designer's choice here in two ways. The first is that the generic convention of this angle plays into the character's criminal backstory; Paul Rudd's hapless character would not be that out of place as the protagonist in an actual film noir. The second interpretation is that the tilted view has a suggestion of slight disorientation, which links in with Ant-Man's power to shrink himself and change the way he interacts with his environment (often with disorientating effect). 

Match Cut: Ant-Man's leg shadows have been matched with the ant's antennae in the mise en scene of the poster. For want of a better term, I'm going to call this a 'match cut' - a reference to a film technique where a shot of something will cut to a shot of something else whilst retaining some common element. One of the most famous examples of this is Stanley Kubrick's 2001, where a caveman throws a bone into the air and the next shot features a satellite rotating through space in a similar manner to said bone. The purpose of the match cut is to create a thematic link between two completely separate scenes in separate settings. In this poster for Ant-Man, the designer has created a link between the hero and the ant by making their shadows overlap one another. 

Body Language: The posture of Ant-Man is suggestive of Marvel's now-familiar 'hero' shot. This is a shot where the hero is photographed from behind with their head turned to one side. It accentuates the musculature of the back and is suggestive of someone steeling themselves to defend against an attack (a heroic idea in itself - the hero is never the one to strike first). Marvel love this pose and have made it something of a meme for all their heroes.

Other Elements: There are a couple of other small touches that contribute to the overall effectiveness of the poster. The particles around the edges are a nice addition as they could be viewed as a form of foreshadowing that's representative of Ant-Man's ultimate quest in the film to shrink himself down to the molecular level. Another element is the way in which the font choice for the film title is reminiscent of classic comic fonts from the 1960s. 

And, even though this isn't an official poster, the absence of Paul Rudd's name speaks to the fact that it isn't necessary for Marvel to sell their films on the basis of an actor's presence - it's the characters that audiences go to see with superhero films (case in point, how many people have been disappointed by the cinematic Hulk being played by three separate actors? Or how easy is it for studios to recast Batman without fear of audience backlash?)

Questions for Students

Students will need to think about some of the bigger questions tied to the purpose of a film poster.

1. What message is this poster trying to convey about the film?
2. How does this poster want the audience to think about the film?
3. What is the poster designer relying on to help 'sell' the film?

In order to get them there, you could ask a range of questions related to the above visual literacy elements. Think about:

1. What is the significance of the colours used?
2. Comment on the body language and placement of Ant-Man, and how the viewer interacts with this.
3. Describe the more symbolic elements of the poster and explain how and why they've been used.
   
4. What is the salient part of the image? How do you know this?
5. Draw the vectors and indicate where they lead the eye, and why.
6. Describe the mise en scene and angle/size of the shot.
7. What genres are being suggested, how are they being suggested, and why are they being suggested?
8. Explain why the film does not have a tagline or actor names in big letters. 

And then, after all of the above has been completed, ask students to consider whether they think the poster worked in getting their attention and why this was the case. If they did not like the poster, they will need to justify how they would redesign it.

Poster Analysis #1: The Jungle Book

In a previous life I wrote a lot of film reviews. It made little money but it was a labor of love and, hey, who doesn't love movies? I still love cinema but I don't get anywhere near enough time these days to keep up with its latest ebbs and flows. 

 

I can still indulge in my fascination with film posters though because the internet is awash in them!

One of the benefits of the internet is that it democratised information. Things became accessible to a broader range of people and this continues to grow broader, meaning that if you have the inclination to design your own film poster you can do this and then potentially share it with millions upon millions of other people. This also works for the big guys too, with any marketed material now proliferated throughout the internet.

Over the next month I've decided to tackle Nanowrimo for the third time (third time's the charm, right?) so I'll have little time to write blog posts. I thought I might keep things ticking along by looking at a few posters.

There are several striking things about the above poster that tie into the study of visual literacy in the English classroom. Let's break it down element by element.

Light and Shade: The borders of the poster are cast in shadow, creating silhouette-like effects for the figures in the foreground. This 'vignetting' of the image pulls the viewer's focus into the middle, where the source of light is, which brings us to...

Salience: The salient (main) feature of an image is usually its central figure, or a large piece of writing. This is almost always a matter of perspective - what each viewer sees as having salience may differ, as does the creator's vision of what will be salient. It's worth thinking of a poster as an exercise in persuasion - it's a product design to persuade the viewer to be interested. I would argue that the salient part of this image is one of it's smallest visual features - the flame in Mowgli's hand, which may be making a thematic point. A lot of the elements work together to draw our eye to this point. But, as mentioned, this is a matter of perspective. 

Colour: Colour often functions as a form of symbolism. We attach colours to certain connotations or associations, dependent on our cultural background. For example, in Western cultures the colour white is used to symbolise purity and peace (as seen in the wearing of a white dress at a wedding, or the waving of a white flag). In Ancient Egypt, however, white was the colour for death, and among the Bedouin peoples white represents fertility and happiness. In the case of The Jungle Book, the colours are organic, orange/yellow to represent the light brought by Mowgli, and blue/green to demonstrate the nature-based setting of the jungle.

Colour wheels demonstrate colour oppositions and help designers select colours that will contrast well with one another.

 

Colour also functions, from a design standpoint, in concert with other colours for aesthetic impact. A cursory understanding of colour theory will help students comprehend why certain colour palettes are used when creating images for film. The poster for The Jungle Book takes a muted approach to the often overused blue/orange contrast (look up blue/orange film posters to see just how often these two colours get used together). Part of the reason for this is that it demonstrates a juxtaposition between a 'cool' colour and a 'warm' one, which can assist with attracting the eye. 

Camera Angle / Shot Size: The camera is placed somewhere between eye level and slightly lower, and captures an extreme long shot of Mowgli in his environment. The angle and shot size work together to place an emphasis on the setting (the jungle) and Mowgli's role in leading a vanguard of sorts into this realm (making him the viewer's identification point in this poster/film). The size of Mowgli in comparison to the environment also suggests a certain power in the setting - that Mowgli is dwarfed against these ruins suggests that they are something to be reckoned with, something that will feature significantly in the film.

Mise en scene: This French term literally translates as 'setting the stage' and refers to the design of things within the shot. A director needs to consider mise en scene when arranging what the audience sees in each shot and how they see it. In this case, we have an 'over-the-shoulder' shot of sorts that places the viewer on the shoulder of the animals as they look up towards Mowgli. The image itself is neatly split into background-midground-foreground by the architecture, creating a three-dimensional effect looking into the environment, which dovetails nicely into the film's promotion as a '3D' experience. 

Focus: The camera is focused predominantly on the foreground and, at a pinch, the midground too. The large statue-head in the background is unfocused - perhaps inviting curiosity from the viewer, a sense of something being held back out of reach, something that would bear further investigation if the viewer agrees to watch the film. 

Vectors: Images often utilise lines (imagined or real) to draw the viewer's eye to where the designer wants them to look first. There aren't clear, strong examples of this in The Jungle Book's poster, but the contours of the animals in the foreground - the big cat, the wolf, the monkeys, and even the snake, all seem to point towards Mowgli in the middle. This isn't a coincidence; he's the main character. This is part of how we know he's intended to be interpreted as the main character.

Font: There's a slightly cursive, scimitar-like quality to the key parts of the lettering that is reminiscent of colonial India. The pock-marked texturing of the letters also correlates with the texture of the ruins in the image, suggesting the worn and aged surface of stone structures deep within the jungle. 

Gaze: Gaze is often characterised in terms of how the viewer engages with media. In the English classroom this can refer to where a central character is looking in an image - do the eyes make contact with the camera (and therefore the audience)? Do they look off-centre at something else? What do these acts symbolise in relation to the content of the text? In the case of The Jungle Book, we are given no eyes to observe. Instead, Mowgli's gaze is elsewhere. The gaze of the animals is elsewhere. Where do these eyes look? What role is the audience being cast into by this act? These things coincide to place emphasis on the setting and it's three-dimensional quality. It's an invitation to adventure.

Generic Conventions: Allowing the viewer to identify genre is a big part of a film's effort to promote itself. In this case, The Jungle Book suggests the genres of adventure and fantasy through its inclusion of animals, architecture suggestive of ancient civilisation, the boy's heroic and curious stance, and the previously-mentioned evocations of the font and the gaze of the characters. The image also showcases the computer-generated scenery and animal-characters that feature in the film - elements made possible by 21st century technology. This is a wave of technological innovation that has played into Disney's relatively recent effects-driven wave of adapting their classic animated oeuvre into live action, a trend that could be seen as a 2010s-2020s sub-genre unto itself (see their effects-heavy live action remakes of: Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Mulan, Dumbo).

Promotional Choices: The choice to only portray these characters from behind could also be interpreted as a deliberate 'holding back' of detail. Disney knows that these are popular characters and that a big drawcard for modern audiences will be seeing what Shere Khan, Baloo, Bagheera, King Louie, etc., all look like in this expensive, modern adaptation. The property itself - a story produced by Disney from a well-known book and a well-known animated film - means that there is little need to rely on A-list actors to attract viewers. Hence, we don't see any actors in the poster, and the names are relatively small. There is also no need for a tagline - it's The Jungle Book, most people already know approximately what it is, so Disney knows that their best approach is to instead focus on their recreation of this beloved story and the way that modern cutting-edge special effects are being used to bring it to life.

Questions for Students

Students will need to think about some of the bigger questions tied to the purpose of a film poster.

1. What message is this poster trying to convey about the film?
2. How does this poster want the audience to think about the film?
3. What are the filmmakers relying on to to help 'sell' the film?

In order to get them there, you could ask a range of questions related to the above visual literacy elements. Think about:

1. How has colour been used to attract the viewer's attention?
2. How has colour been used to represent the film's themes?
3. Comment on the body language and gaze of the characters, and how the viewer interacts with these.
4. What is the salient part of the image?
5. Draw the vectors and indicate where they lead the eye, and why.
   
6. Describe the mise en scene and angle/size of the shot.
7. What genre is being suggested and how?
8. Explain why the film does not have a tagline.

And then, after all of the above has been completed, ask students to consider whether they think the poster worked in getting their attention and why this was the case. If they did not like the poster, they will need to justify how they would redesign it.

Writing in Response to the Literary Homelands Prescribed Texts

One of the challenges of the HSC Extension English syllabus is the idea that students need to analyse a broad selection of texts as part of their elective. The mandated amount of texts for study are as follows:

• Three of the Prescribed Texts (two of which must be 'extended print' texts - this means two drawn from the available novel, non-fiction text, drama, and short story suite options).
• Two related texts.
  

This means that, in response to the question given in the HSC Exam for the Elective, students will need to be able to ostensibly call upon detailed knowledge of up to five texts (though in reality, it's most likely to be two prescribed texts and one related). Putting aside any concerns we might have about the level of depth that this allows for in a single one-hour exam, students are required to have a holistic enough understanding of the studied texts to be able to achieve a synthesis of understanding in response to the Elective descriptor. 

So how do we teach this?

There are many roads to Rome, so to speak, but having just finished teaching the new syllabus for the second time I feel more ready now to share a particular approach after fine-tuning the way it works in action. 

This hinges on the use of a schema - download here.

1. Start with your normal way of approaching each text. Students should read, and re-read, and discuss, and analyse, and write about the texts in a variety of ways.
   
2. There then needs to be common identifiable threads that can be applied to all of the texts. This requires legwork from the teacher because students will not have read all of the texts until the end of the course. Part of this legwork has been done already in the Elective descriptor, and this is reflected in the schema. There is room on the schema for additional concepts to be drawn out from all of the combined texts that have been chosen for the students. As far as the Literary Homelands Elective goes, I've indicated a range of common concepts in the schema and left space for the class to come up with further ones throughout the duration of the course.
   
3. After each text has been studied, students look at the schema and connect their analysis to each concept (or half of the concepts - your mileage may vary). 
4. As you move through the course, students come back to this schema over and over again, using the concepts to discuss commonalities and differences, building up their meta-analysis of  Literary Homelands.

Eventually students internalise many of the concepts. They pick out their favourites and they start connecting quotes to a thesis they develop in response to each concept. They write paragraphs exploring their meta-analysis of each concept. 

And then you chuck some HSC-style questions at them and they practise rearranging their meta-analysis accordingly.

This schema approach could be easily adapted to each of the electives. You'll just need to examine the the Elective descriptor for your chosen Elective and use the indicated key concepts to fill in the schema accordingly. Once you've read the Prescribed Texts as the teacher, undertaken some professional learning, or read associated academic texts, you can then populate the schema further to suit the needs of the Elective.