Teaching Film as a Skill

Hello again! Today I presented at the English Teachers Association 2018 Conference on a Film Studies English Elective for Stage 5. I'm not able to attach the PowerPoint here as it features pictures of students, however, if you click each of the links below you'll be able to access some of the resources covered. I've also included some additional stuff on film skills. 

Making a Zoetrope 

Close-Ups 

The 180 Degree Rule 

And, as a bonus, here is a summary of last year's presentation on Film Skills, which includes some of this stuff as well: Film Craft

I have some additional stuff for film study that will be released soon as a chapter in the textbook Charged with Meaning (2nd edition), so I recommend that too :)

Thanks!

Dracula and Extension English 1

Artist's impression of teacher at the end of the school year.

Hi! It's 2018 and I'm presenting at this year's English Teacher's Association on a few things, including the use of Bram Stoker's Dracula as the key text for the Year 11 Extension English 1 course. Here is a copy of the PowerPoint for this session:

• Dracula and Extension English 1

A quick caveat: I'm no expert when it comes to Extension English 1 but, having just finished teaching the Year 11 Texts, Culture and Value module, I do have some resources and ideas to share and that's what this blog post represents. 

Here are the resources handed out in the session: 

• Texts, Culture and Value handout.

And here are some additional resources touched on in the session:

• Dracula module study guide
• The Lost Boys module study guide

Enjoy! 

Incorporating Drafting into Extended Response Assessment Tasks

With the advent of NESA's stipulations for HSC Assessment, in which students may only sit one formal examination per subject (including essays set in this fashion), there is now an increased need to senior students to practise the writing of extended responses in a meaningful fashion. Prior to the new rules, students might have written essays in assessable conditions anywhere up to 3 or 4 times across their final schooling year, but now this is no longer possible.

One way to get around this is to incorporate drafting into an assessable essay. This takes away the formalised examination context and - in the spirit of what NESA is hoping for - allows for a less stressful approach to essay writing in which students can engage with assessment as learning. 

There are two examples here for different subject areas, both of which were written for the older syllabus that ended this year. Regardless of your KLA, it's worth checking out both of them as they represent different approaches to the drafting process.

• Advanced English Example

• Modern History Example

Both tasks utilise an analytical marking criteria (as opposed to the holistic style rubrics used for HSC marking). It's a different way to mark than what we may be used to, however, it's imperative to use an analytical-styled criteria when undertaking assessment as learning as it allows the students to identify specific skills they can work on to consolidate strengths and address weaknesses. 

The holistic marking grid (in which student ability is represented in bands of grouped criteria) is specifically designed as the absolute end point of the learning process, IE. This style of criteria gets used for HSC marking because the students don't get to see how they're marked at this point. An analytical marking grid (in which specific skills are addressed with their own independent marks) is designed to offer meaningful feedback to the student, and this is often what a lot of Australian universities use for their humanities courses when demonstrating to students what criteria they need to address when submitting assignments.

Anyway! In terms of the resources attached above:

The Advanced English task requires students to submit a draft at some point before the final submission date. In terms of making their drafting visible to the marker, 5 of the 25 marks have been allocated to a reflection statement that they must attach to their final submission. 

The Modern History task strips back the differentiation of skills (it's only a 15 mark response) in order to take the pressure off students who are being asked to do multiple drafts. The drafting process is incorporated here as a non-mandatory due date, which works as thus:

• Students submit a draft about one week before the final due date. Students can't be penalised if they don't submit at this time - it isn't mandatory and it isn't the final due date.
• The teacher marks the drafts and gives them back to the students with feedback.
• Students have an option to re-submit on the final due date for re-marking. If they choose not to do this then they take the mark they've already been given instead.

Roughly half the students in this scenario re-submit a new draft for marking. The other half aren't interested in "doing the assessment task twice" and will take the mark they've been initially given. It turns out to be a remarkably efficient approach as you get to finalise marks for half the students before the final due date.  

I'll write another blog down the track once I've had a chance to develop more assessments in response to the new syllabus.

Advanced Module B: Critical Study of Literature

Prose Fiction Options

There are three prose options prescribed for study in Module B, the most contemporary of which is Kashiguro's 1986 novel. Of all the modules across the HSC syllabuses, Advanced English Module B is no doubt the most classically canonical in terms of the array of texts it offers. This is perhaps at its most obvious in the prose fiction texts on offer - an Austen novel, a Dickens novel, and a novel by a Nobel Prize-winning author. All three options are by British writers.

Emma by Jane Austen

What is it: Young Emma Woodhouse is the financially independent and unmarried daughter of a widower, Henry Woodhouse. Uninterested in love herself, Emma takes it upon herself to play matchmaker among her contemporaries in the country town of Highbury. A comedy of manners unfolds in which Emma's machinations lead to a series of romantic misunderstandings and awkward interactions.

Scope for Study: The gossipy (some might even say vacuous) nature of Jane Austen's canonical text may lend itself quite well to the world of students. It's not too far of a jump to imagine the highly-mannered anxiety and neverending teeth-gnashing of these characters in a Facebook-like social media setting, and I could imagine Advanced English students having some fun transposing particular sequences of the novel into this format. The facile nature of the plot aside, there's ample scope for great depth of contextual analysis in Austen's depiction of a society heavily bound by rules relating to class and gender, as well as room to examine the idea of a subversive subtext struggling to the surface within the novel.

NESA Annotations: The last three NESA annotation documents (from 2009-2014, 2015-2020, and 2019-2023 respectively) make no mention of Emma.

Verdict: I have to admit that I found it quite torturous to get through this, and any teacher planning to teach it to a class full of 21st century teenagers may want to sound out their appreciation (or tolerance) for the likes of Jane Austen before making them commit to the pointless meanderings of her most irritating heroine. There were a few points where I cursorily noted the alien nature of Austen's representation of her world - in particular the chasm between men and women in Emma often makes them seem as if they were two completely different species, and some students may find this of interest. Personally though, I don't think I could ever see myself teaching this text. 

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

What is it: Philip Pirip, nicknamed 'Pip', is an orphan who lives a squalid life of abuse and hardship with his older sister in Victorian England. For reasons that only become clear later in the novel, Pip is sent to live in London thanks to the donations of an anonymous benefactor. In the city, Pip comes of age and lives outside his means, and must learn to navigate his way through a cruel, class-bound world forged in the harshness of early capitalism.

Scope for Study: Dickens' classic tale of money and morality is both depressing and comic, and students may be wary of the many characters who duck in and out of the ambitious, rambling narrative. That said, there are some key things to note: the novel's genre-splicing examination of mid-19th century England may seem schizophrenic to the modern reader, however, students will do well to familiarise themselves with Great Expectations' origins as a serialised story. The careful construction of character relationships such as that between Orlick and Pip, or Pip and Joe, are also very useful in illuminating the novel's significantly Victorian themes.

NESA Annotations: Disappointingly, there are no annotations for Great Expectations in the three available NESA documents on Prescribed Texts.

Verdict: I read this when I was in Year 12 and, you know what? I didn't hate it. I was surprised by how much I found myself invested in Pip's story. Dickens' gift for characterisation and setting endures well beyond his time and the bildungsroman structure, along with elements of the crime, comedy, and gothic genres, should serve students in providing a colourful and varied experience. There's more than enough scholarship out there to assist any teacher choosing to teach the text in a high school setting.

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

What is it: In Japan's post-WWII reconstruction, the artist Masuji Ono navigates a changing world and the complicated dynamics of a Japanese society trying to find its way forward. As Ono attempts to orchestrate a marriage for his daughter he discovers layers of unsaid difficulty obstructing his path, and reflects on his life and legacy.

Scope for Study: Don't be fooled by the slender length of this novel, there is a lot going on beneath Ishiguro's careful and deliberately minimalist language. An Artist of the Floating World provides scope for students to examine the concept of the unreliable narrator in fiction, with Ono's possible memory issues and lack of awareness both playing into the way the author crafts his perspective. Students will also benefit from linking the novel to its World War II context, looking at Mrs Kawakami's fading establishment as a symbol of imperialist Japan's extinction, and the grandson Ichiro's role in the text as a symbol of the West's encroaching influence on Japanese culture.

NESA Annotations: Notes are available on An Artist of the Floating World in the 2015-2020 Annotations (which erroneously lists Kazuo Ishiguro as the director of the text rather than author), but be aware that it connects the text to the now-defunct Extension 1 Module B Elective 'After the Bomb'. The annotations highlight the unreliable first-person narration as a point of interest, as well as the narrator's changing viewpoint throughout his personal history as a reflection of Japan's rising nationalism prior to the outbreak of World War II.

Verdict: Ishiguro's elegant novel, now freed from the constraints of the Extension Elective, would make a great Advanced English text for close, critical examination. The idea of analysing this particular unreliable narrator will challenge students who may not have ever been exposed before to such a sophisticated take on the concept, and the Japanese mid-20th century context is also highly interesting in itself - providing room for provocative discussion around nationalism, totalitarianism, and the influence of Western culture on the rest of the world.

Poetry / Drama Options

There are four options in this part of the Module and I suspect that this is where a lot of teachers will be looking due to the restrictive nature of the overall Prescriptions List (IE. Under the rules of the syllabus, if one chooses Nineteen Eighty-Four for the Common Module and then Hag-Seed / The Tempest for Module A then the final choice must be a poetry or drama option). Most of the options in this Module - a post-WWI poetry, a 19th century Danish play, and a 1950s radio drama - are quite old and play into the idea of the Western 'dead white man' canon. The inclusion of the relatively recent Earth Hour does provide a 21st century option though - also one of only 2 Australian options for this Module overall.

Selected Poems by TS Eliot

• The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
• Preludes
• Rhapsody on a Windy Night
• The Hollow Men
• Journey of the Magi

What are they: The selection of five texts above are among the most famed of Eliot's relatively few poems, and are united here as premier representatives of the 20th century Modernist literary movement. Released from the constraints of Victorian formalism, Eliot's poetry uses clear and accessible language and imagery both banal and shocking to connect with the new audiences of the post-WWI world.

Scope for Study: Probably of a greater length than any other poetry students will have looked at up until this point, Eliot's work demonstrates a range of techniques that arose in the Modernist period (stream of consciousness, interior monologues, epigraphs, difficult allusions) whilst remaining relatively easy for new readers to engage with. Teachers will need to be wary of the layers of context that will be needed to illuminate the depths of Eliot's work, both in terms of his personal socio-political context and in terms of the intertextuality that his work both ties into and deliberately rubs up against.

NESA Annotations: Annotations can be found in the 2015-2020 document. The exact same poems were prescribed for Module B in the last syllabus so the annotations still stand as they are. These notes cover Eliot's role as one of the key figures of the Modernist movement, his engagement with themes related to modern life (alienation, doubt, loneliness), and the influence of other art movements (such as Cubism and Imagism) on his work.

Verdict: Eliot's work is easy enough read and can be understand relatively quickly, however, there is a density to his poetry that will require a lot of background work. It is no doubt for this reason that only five poems have been included here. As mentioned above, Eliot is quite sophisticated in his use of textual allusions and it is in the ability of students to come to grips with this that will provide the key to their success in studying this collection.

Earth Hour by David Malouf

• Aquarius
• Radiance
• Ladybird
• A Recollection of Starlings: Rome '84
• Eternal Moment at Poggia Madonna
• Towards Midnight
• Earth Hour
• Aquarius II

What are they: David Malouf's collection explores the glimpses of beauty seen in the quiet moments of life. Through the suite of eight poems selected here, Malouf looks at nature, memory, and the moments of reflection that become a prism for the world around us. Published when the celebrated Australian author turned 80, the collection represents the complex perspective that comes at the intersection between talent and wisdom.

Scope for Study: The poetry included here demonstrates the assured and deceptively effortless tone of a poet with the weight of experience behind them. Malouf dances between conversational and obscure, emjambs lines across stanzas, and crafts poetry into a variety of shapes to represent his themes. In addition to these techniques, students will also be able to note the poet's motif of juxtaposition - in terms of imagery ('Aquarius'), shifting from the light to the dark ('Ladybird'), and contrasting poetic structures ('Towards Midnight').

NESA Annotations: Supporting notes can be found in the 2019-2023 NESA document, wherein attention is drawn to Malouf's use of language to depict the domestic and natural as "everyday tableaux". Note is also made of the poet's use of both high and low culture in his choice of allusions, and the way a range of poetic and structural devices are "used to reveal the contours, textures and intersections of memory, imagination and experience." 

Verdict: As the work of a contemporary artist with more than half a century's experience as a published writer, the selection of poetry here gracefully shifts back and forth between the traditional and the contemporary in a pleasant and accessible fashion. As far as choices for teaching Module B go I think there's a good working balance here between the concise length of the poetry and the depth of technical expertise used to construct it. Teachers and students will have more than enough time to pull each of these poems apart and identify commonalities that unite the selection.

A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen

What is it: Nora and Torvald are a married couple in 19th century Denmark celebrating Torvald's recent promotion to bank manager. As Nora prepares the house for Christmas, an unexpected visitor named Krogstad calls by and starts blackmailing her. It is revealed that, contrary to the laws of this time and place in regards to the rights of women, Nora has borrowed money from Krogstad. As his deadline for payment looms, Nora frantically looks for a way to solve her unsolvable problem.

Scope for Study: Ibsen's play exists as one of the early, seminal works of feminist fiction and as such there is plenty of scope for students for exploring the 19th century context - specifically the development of finely delineated gender and class roles in Europe's age of Industrialisation. Students can also look at Ibsen's use of drama genres to explore his themes, specifically his combination of naturalism and tragedy.

NESA Annotations: NESA have not provided annotations for this text.

Verdict: I'm not against teaching A Doll's House but I'm not particularly passionate about it either. It's fairly straightforward in terms of comprehension and would be an easy enough text for a class to get their head around. The contextual elements would allow for some lively discussion and dissection of Ibsen's use of characterisation to explore his themes.

Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas

What is it: In the Welsh fishing village of Llareggub (read it backwards) the townsfolk awaken from their slumber, shake off the night's dreams, and go about their daily business. In Llareggub this isn't just one morning, it's all mornings, and the village people remember their lives and reminisce on their hopes, their dreams, their routines, until the night comes again.

Scope for Study: Thomas' text is described as a 'play for voices', which alludes to its origins as a radio play, and students may need a moment or two to adjust to the unique format that the narrative takes. The author's background in poetry manifests in Under Milk Wood's wryly humourous, lyrically-constructed dialogue, and in the way each character's life story is succinctly expressed in verse. Analysis in the classroom would need to draw upon the Welsh and radio contexts, the author's use of symbolism and motifs related to the significance of the sea in the lives of the villagers, and the play's unusual structure.

NESA Annotations: I'm sensing a bit of a theme in this module - like Emma, Great Expectations, and A Doll's House, there are no annotations provided by NESA for Under Milk Wood.

Verdict: Once I got into the rhythm of Under Milk Wood I fell head over heels in love with Thomas' attempt to preserve a time and place for posterity with so much beautiful language. Whether it's the description of the "sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea" or the simple image of a horse with "seaweed on its hooves", Thomas has a gift for language that makes his tragic slide into an early, alcoholic grave feel all the more devastating. Under Milk Wood is a perfect text for Advanced English for two precise reasons. The first is that it's a challenging and rewarding literary experience that will be of great benefit to the students who parse and curate its poetry for their own pleasure. The second, and perhaps more important reason, is that its relatively brief length will allow for the fact that these high-achieving students have a lot on their plate in their HSC year without being expected to read a 300 page 19th century novel.

Nonfiction / Film / Media Options

The 'other' section of Module B includes two European memoirs, an American film, and an Australian documentary. That Australia documentary is important too - it's the only text in this entire module composed by a female.

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal

What is it: Artist Edmund de Waal explores the history of his family's relationship with a priceless collection of netsuke (ornate, palm-sized Japanese sculptures), tracing their origins through the rise of French interest in Japanese culture in the 19th century and the fluctuating fortunes of the Ephrussi dynasty as they collected art across Europe and then survived through Nazi persecution in WWII.

Scope for Study: De Waal's idiosyncratic family history becomes an opportunity to chart Europe's relationship with the Jewish people throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, with the Ephrussi family's reputation shifting in response to antisemitism both an ingrained and politically-supported sense. Whilst the Holocaust takes up a key, later portion of the novel, it's perhaps de Waal's ambitious reconstruction of a wider history of the European Jew framed around the netsuke that more readily draws the reader into a discussion of the relationship between art and humanity. Students will benefit from examining the text as a masterclass in turning non-fiction into narrative, with The Hare with the Amber Eyes existing as an attempt to shape a grand multi-generational history into something that makes for narratological satisfaction.

NESA Annotations: Notes can be found in the 2015-2020 NESA document in the English Extension 1 section, with the text previously prescribed as part of the 'Life Writing' option in the Extension Genre module. The teacher is therefore directed to consider the way that de Waal has used a variety of texts to construct his history, with the significance of the netsuke acknowledged as a symbolic focal point. The sheer scope of de Waal's efforts to write a memoir of five generations of a family is also highlighted for its exploration of "loss, compassion, love, diaspora and survival."

Verdict: It would take a certain kind of ambition for a teacher to tackle a novel this provocatively ambitious and adult, and I think only the most mature and sophisticated students would gain an appreciation for it. With this in mind I can see why it was previously pegged as an Extension 1 text, and I can see most larger classes of Advanced English students struggling with it. There are a lot of dense references woven into de Waal's use of figurative language, requiring a well-read reader who can synthesise meaning from his combination of multiple and obscure cultural allusions. It's a different and meticulous reading experience that I'd have no problem recommending to someone who was interested in such a thing but I really can't see it working for most students.

Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov

What is it: Russian author Nabokov takes the reader on a tour of his earliest and most formative memories. In the process of ruminating on his privileged childhood, love for collecting butterflies, and time in pre-revolutionary Russia, Nabokov reflects on the nature of memory itself with a series of reflexive and highly descriptive vignettes.

Scope for Study: As far as study goes, there are endless opportunities in Nabokov's work for intense examination of language. Every chapter, sentence, phrase, word choice is a sublime combination of sophisticated vocabulary and arrangement that would benefit from further examination. There is also ample opportunity to broaden student understanding through exploring Nabokov's context as a child of Romanov-era privilege, and the text's non-linear and essay-styled structure also allows for consideration of the way experienced authors approach the process of transferring memory into memoir.

NESA Annotations: Notes on Speak, Memory can be found in the 2015-2020 annotations and pay particular mind to Nabokov's idiosyncratic use of language and structure to explore memories from across the gulf of time. The annotations raise questions relating to the nature of truth and memory, with students encouraged to explore the myriad approaches that writers can take to representing their own past.

Verdict: I would be misrepresenting myself if I didn't mention my confusion over the inclusion of this text here, and I can't help but think that somebody at the Board of Studies saw that this memoir often gets placed quite highly in Top 100 non-fiction book lists and thought, "Yeah, that'll do us for a non-fiction text." If there's ever an argument against the existence of a literary canon, or the idea that we should be teaching such a canon in our schools, it's books like this one. Nabokov's text, whilst beautifully written, is complex and self-referential to the point of complete alienation - especially when we consider that our students are mostly 17 year olds who were born in the 21st century. What is the relevance of this text to their lives? I'd love to hear from anyone out there who has taught this text and found success with it - I'm incredibly curious to know how it goes in the modern Australian schooling context.

Good Night, and Good Luck, directed by George Clooney

What is it: Edward R. Murrow, radio journalist, uses the new medium of television in the 1950s to investigate the trial and dismissal of a U.S. Air Force officer, and uncovers suspicious circumstances in the government's attempts to incriminate those who have been associated with known communists. So starts the historical television crusade of Murrow who, in his use of the truth to dispel America's Cold War climate of fear, comes into direct conflict with the anti-communist campaign of Senator Joe McCarthy.

Scope for Study: Good Night, and Good Luck is a cerebral and contextually-dense depiction of an emotionally charged period in America's history, and students will be able to draw parallels between Senator McCarthy's Cold War 'witch hunt' and current discussions in the media relating to the War on Terror. The film's theme of journalistic integrity will also be useful in sparking debate among students in regards to how far journalists should go in questioning the motives of the government, and the ways in which this ongoing debate continues to shape discourse within our culture.

NESA Annotations: Notes can be found in the 2015-202 annotations, where Good Night, and Good Luck is referenced in relation to the Cold War-centric elective 'After the Bomb'. The film's black-and-white cinematography is mentioned in conjunction with its use of archival footage, and the NESA annotations highlight this device as part of a wider attempt to place the viewer firmly within the 1950s context. Mention is also made of the 'docudrama' genre, further reinforcing ideals of authenticity and realism. 

Verdict: An intelligent film that effortlessly taps into the emotionally-charged atmosphere of the McCarthy era. The removal of the After the Bomb elective from the syllabus de-emphasises the film's context a little but, if the teacher plans their sequence of texts right, I think there would be some huge gains for students if this film was taught in conjunction with The Crucible or Nineteen Eighty-Four* in the Common Module. The common contextual threads between these texts would assist students with building a strong background knowledge from which to critically analyse and evaluate in an increasingly independent manner. 

*Now that I think about it a little more, I don't actually think it's possible to teach both Nineteen Eighty-Four and Good Night, and Good Luck to the same class. The way the syllabus is designed prevents this particular pairing from being possible, which is a real shame. 

Unfolding Florence, directed by Gillian Armstrong

What is it: Florence Broadhurst - comedienne, businesswoman, wallpaper designer - was a one-of-a-kind socialite who roared her way across the world in the 1920s before 'arriving' in Australia in the 1940s. In the 1950s she created her own sense of celebrity, constructing her image from nothing other than relentless self-promotion and ambitious talent, eventually finding her greatest fame as an iconic wallpaper designer in the 1960s. Her story came to a mysterious and tragic end in 1977 when she was found brutally murdered in her Paddington studio in Sydney.  

Scope for Study: Armstrong's documentary on Broadhurst embraces the socialite's tendency for reinvention and truth-bending, employing the 'voice' of Broadhurst (played by Judi Farr) as the unreliable narrator of her own story. At the outset of the film, the fake-Broadhurst remarks, "Almost everyone thinks they know who I was and, of course, everyone thinks they know who killed me," establishing the slippery nature of representing a real life figure based on the often contradictory interpretations of the people who knew her. Teachers and students will be able to look at the tension that arises from the imposition of narrative on the remaining fragments of a fading past, and the bathos that results from the almost comedic narration of the fake-Broadhurst and the way it undercuts the brutality of her death and the artifice of the documentary itself.

NESA Annotations As Unfolding Florence was previously used as a prescribed text for the English Extension 1 'Life Writing' Elective, the 2015-2020 Annotations are mostly concerned with identifying the film's implicit questioning of the difficulties in representing a life through the documentary genre. Mention is also made of the various devices used to illuminate Broadhurst's life - re-enactments, interviews, narration, animation - and their effectiveness as part of a hybrid text.

Verdict: Lively, inventive, complex and entertaining - Unfolding Florence is a wonderful piece of film-making that sheds light on a fascinating individual whilst remaining true to the inherent difficulties in representing truth where truth doesn't want to be known. I think this would be a fun and rewarding text to teach, and it's probably one of the most left-of-centre texts included in this entire module.

Shakespearean Drama Options

The inclusion of a Shakespeare text here is probably intended for freeing up some of the text choices in other modules (with a Shakespeare text being mandatory for Advanced English study).

King Henry IV, Part 1 by William Shakespeare

What is it: Young Hal, future king of England, spends his days drinking and joking in an inn with the cowardly and braggadocious rogue Falstaff. While Hal wiles away his days in a manner unbecoming of royalty, his father Henry IV prepares for war against northern rebels led by the prideful Hotspur. As the battle approaches, Hal is called to account for his behaviour before his father and must choose between the carefree lifestyle of his youth and the responsibilities of kingship.

Scope for Study: Henry IV, Part 1 gives students a chance to interact with one of Shakespeare's histories (the third and less studied of the three major genres his plays are usually categorised under). Everything about Henry IV, Part 1 is presented in halves; the plot is halved between the comedy of Falstaff in the pub and the characters becoming embroiled in a bitter civil war, the characters of Hotspur and Falstaff presenting as two halves of a potential destiny for Hal, and the play itself as the first half of a bigger narrative about the kingship of Henry IV. The play is also a great example of a coming-of-age narrative reflected through the lens of Shakespeare's England.

NESA Annotations: Annotations on this text can be found in the 2015-2020 document in reference to the play's previous placement as a prescribed text in the Representing People and Politics elective. Attention is paid to the juxtaposition between Hotspur and Prince Hal, with students directed to examine the transformation from irresponsible youth to future leader and heir to the throne. Owing to the People and Politics elective the annotations also highlight the way the play has been performed in different contexts with different political/historical aims.

Verdict: Falstaff alone would make this play worth studying, such is the character's enduring comic appeal. The historical context of Shakespeare's plays are always great fuel for close study and Henry IV Part 1's use of English-Welsh-Northern political relations is no exception to this rule, with the noble Hotspur working as an effective foil to Hal but also representative of a real world counterpart from history. I think I would enjoy teaching this one; as a lesser-taught Shakespeare play it would give me a chance to examine a classic that hasn't been 'done-to-death'.

Texts and Human Experiences: Related Text Ideas

 

One great thing about the new HSC Common Module is that the nature of the rubric allows for the inclusion of any text that concerns human experiences... which is arguably just about every text ever written! That said, the mileage of a text (students must study at least ONE related text in conjunction with this module) will vary depending on each individual teacher's approach, preference, and the level of sophistication identified with said text.

 

I'm thinking this particular blog entry will change over time as the Texts and Human Experiences Common Module becomes more of a familiarity than the uncharted waters that it currently seems. For the moment, here are some of the Related Texts that I'm suggesting to my students.

Novels
Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
Breath by Tim Winton
Blind Faith by Ben Elton

Non-Fiction
Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
My Thinning Years by Jon Croteau
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
No Fixed Address by Robyn Davidson
Tibet, Tibet by Patrick French
Marching Powder by Rusty Young

Graphic Novels
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
Blankets by Craig Thompson
The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil by Stephen Collins
In Real Life by Cory Doctorow
Daytripper by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba
Skim by Mariko Tamaki
Blue by Pat Grant

Film/TV
Redfern Now Season 1, Episode 4, 'Stand Up' directed by Rachel Perkins
New Boy directed by Steph Green

Poetry
'Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night' by Dylan Thomas
'O Captain! My Captain' by Walt Whitman
'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' by Oscar Wilde
'Monster' by Samuel Wagan Watson
'Where the Sidewalk Ends' by Shel Silverstein
'O What is That Sound That So Thrills the Ear' by W.H. Auden
'Invictus' by William Ernest Hemley

Short Stories
'The Most Dangerous Game' by Richard Connell
'A Straight Bat' by Roger Holt
'The Lottery' by Shirley Jackson
'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' by Ambrose Bierce
'The Veldt' by Ray Bradbury
'The Last Night of the World' by Ray Bradbury

Speeches
Keynote address at the Seneca Falls Women's Right Convention, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
'We Choose to Go to the Moon' by John F. Kennedy
'Freedom from Fear' by Aung San Suu Kyi
'It's Not Always Easy to Say Where we Come From' by King Harald of Norway

Here's the list as a PDF with some extra information about each text.

Texts and Human Experiences: Orwell, Stalin, and the History Paradox

I forgot how much fun teaching Nineteen Eighty-Four was. Perhaps that's a paradoxical statement, considering the miserable nature of the text and the misery-inducing state it can inspire in the reader (Orwell's masterpiece is more likely appreciated than 'enjoyed'). That said, paradox works here due to the text's inclusion as part of the Year 12 HSC Common Module Texts and Human Experiences, in which readers gain insight into 'anomalies, paradoxes and inconsistencies in human behaviour'. I can see that Nineteen Eighty-Four isn't a joyful book and yet... I enjoy teaching it so much!

There's a certain comorbidity between the Advanced English and Extension History courses in that both involve interrogating the text to identify degrees of subjectivity. If you're lucky enough to have students who do both courses you'll notice their growing aptitude in relation to this. In regards to Nineteen Eighty-Four there's also a lot to be gained from students who do the Modern History course with all its political -isms. One key concept from Orwell's text that benefits from this increased historical understanding is the idea of a palimpsest.

The palimpsest is an ancient or medieval manuscript page that has been 'cleaned' of its original text and re-used. There's nothing sinister about this; in pre-Gutenberg times parchment was invaluable and hard to come by so repurposing was par for the course. In Winston Smith's world, however, Orwell uses the term to refer to the Party's habit of literally re-writing historical and journalistic documents. Smith's occupation is to locate any documents that contain information the Party has decided no longer fits with their official history and then rewrite them to fit with the new 'facts'.

Orwell was inspired by real practices in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. Every time Stalin 'purged' an offending member from his Party and made them 'disappear' an order would go out to schools to have the students paste new text into their textbooks over the old information, essentially rendering the figure a non-person; someone who never existed. Stalin's comfort with rewriting history can also be observed in the doctored photographs from this era, whereby purged members were painted out of the pictures as if they were never there. 

Activity

My friend Kira told me that she likes to start her students off in studying Nineteen Eighty-Four by imposing an Orwellian atmosphere on the classroom with a series of strict rules designed to get them thinking about totalitarianism. It can be hard for us, having grown up with relatively high levels of privilege, to understand what it might have been like to live in the kind of nightmarish government-controlled state that Orwell describes. I wanted to do something like this and help students get their heads around the palimpsests that Winston is tasked to make throughout the course of the novel.

I don't know how else to relay this other than just describe what I did. So here it is:

• I wordlessly stopped the students at the door. This was automatically different for them because I've never been one for making kids line up outside the classroom. I usually say hello to them too but this time I just held my hand up and went back into the room for a bit as I wanted to heighten their anxiety a little.
• I drew up a table on the board, like this:

• Then I beckoned the students in and told them to place all their bags at the front of the room, and that there was to be no talking or communication. I also had a cardboard box with 'Phone Haven' written on the front and told them to place their phones into it for their 'safekeeping'. The students were very confused by this point and my straight face and lack of eye contact seemed to prevent any discussion around what was going on.
• I then dictated the following:

Year 12 HSC Advanced English is a very intense subject and requires concentration and consistent engagement. In order to foster a better working arrangement it has been decreed that you can now call your teacher by his first name within the confines of this class room. There will also be a rotating roster in which one of you must walk the room every four minutes and check that everyone is OnTask. Infractions or OffTask behaviour will be reported to the teacher immediately.

• Students then copied the table into their books, with four student names placed into the roster.
• I then gave them this context sheet to work on and had Student A start their rounds, checking that each person was doing their work. I asked Student A quietly (the room was so silent that everyone could hear me still) to report back on who was working well and who wasn't. 
• Student B had to report to me on who they thought was enjoying the activity the most and who wasn't. 
• At this point I was admittedly getting a little bored, so I gave Student C a ruler and asked them to make sure that everyone's things were at least 5cm from the edge of the table.
• Student D was told to make each individual student raise their index finger on their non-dominant hand and count slowly to five. There wasn't any relevance to this, I just wanted to emphasise how arbitrary the rules were.  
• This is where the palimpsest comes in. I looked at the roster on the board and decided which student had complied least willingly. To be truthful, all of the students had gone along with the activity with surprisingly little complaining, so I just randomly picked Student A. I told him that he hadn't done a very good job and that he was to stand outside the classroom. I then removed his name from the roster on the board, replaced it with another student's name, told this new student in front of everyone that they had done a good job as the first monitor, and then provided the whole class with paper, glue and scissors.
• I told them that they needed to change the roster in their books to reflect what was on the board. That this had always been the roster. Furthermore, I was to only be referred to as 'Sir' and not my first name and that the text in their book should reflect this. Students wrote out this new information and pasted it over the 'offending' parts of the dictated text. 

All in all, this took about 30-40 minutes. I couldn't help but laugh by the end of it, having kept a straight face for so long, and the students were relieved for the spell to be broken. This Advanced English class had only had me for a teacher for 1 lesson before this (I didn't have them for their Preliminary HSC) so a few were seriously worried that this would be how the class was like from now on!

We discussed the purpose of the activity, what a palimpsest was, and some of the students who'd already read to the end of the book told me that they'd cottoned on partway through. I have some of Stalin's doctored photographs on the back wall so we looked at those and spoke about Stalin's sinister censorship practices in the Soviet Union and how this would have influenced Orwell.

This links back really well to the rubric's mention of 'paradoxes in human behaviour', after all, what greater paradox could there be than history itself being rewritten? If history is meant to be true then how can it be changed? And yet, it happens all the time.

Pushing the Paragraph

Write! Write like the wind!

A while ago I was marking NAPLAN and my desk buddy told me about something she does with her senior classes to help them prepare for the HSC. It was a while ago so I can't recall all the details but the idea was that students are given a paragraph (or essay) prompt and only six minutes to write in response to it. The reason for it being six minutes is that someone, somewhere, crunched the numbers and worked out averages to determine that this is roughly how long it should take per paragraph to generate enough output to qualify their essays as a 'sustained' response in a HSC setting.

I love this idea because, well, other things I'd tried weren't really working. I would give classes practice essay questions to do and the results would be middling at best; the high-performing students would jump into the questions and it was great practice for them, but the students who still had much more potential for further growth would find it too overwhelming. A different someone, somewhere, told me once that, "You don't run a marathon as practice to run a marathon," and I liked that; it resonated with me. The HSC is a massive undertaking that requires a highly-condensed explosion of writing unrivaled in other stages of education - the vast majority of students will never go through anything even remotely like the HSC examinations ever again so it's quite understandable that the less academically-primed students would be reticent to write essays in order to practice before they're asked to write essays in the HSC.

It's much less confronting for most Year 12 students to write paragraphs instead. And, yes, some still try to avoid it, however, when I'm collecting data every single time and letting students see their progress, it becomes difficult for the reluctant to continue non-attempting. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The Goal

In getting students to write paragraphs I want them to be mindful of what they're writing rather than simply trying to write as much as possible. Part of keeping them focused is to make them aware of the lexical density of their writing. 

Lexical density refers to the amount of lexical items found in a piece of writing. A lexical item is any word or word-group that carries meaning on its own, IE. A noun, a verb, an adjective, or an adverb. These are words that we can easily define or can swap with synonyms. If a word isn't a lexical item then it's a grammatical one - these are all the joining or connecting terms, some examples being 'with', 'what', 'it', 'the', 'however', 'in other words', etc. What we want to do is to have students write paragraphs and then test how dense they are with lexical items.

Testing the lexical density of a paragraph is to see how much 'content' is in a piece of writing. The key here is not to think about lexical density in terms of a higher amount of content equalling better writing, it's more a measurement tool that can help pick up patterns and identify trends in writing on repeated examination. 

Some things to keep in mind:

• A high lexical density (say, a piece of writing that is 80% made up of lexical items) might indicate a piece of writing that is too jargonistic, or convoluted, or loaded with words that the writer doesn't necessarily understand. 
• A low lexical density (below 50%) might demonstrate too much colloquialism, informality in sentence construction, or a lack of appropriate vocabulary.
• I'd probably say that the 'sweet spot' would be anywhere between 55% and 75%, but I'm not completely nailed down on this yet. Ask me again after I've collected data from a few more classes over the next 5 years!

The goal is to have students produce something within the 'sweet spot' bracket but, more importantly, to generate a word-count of 180 words or so within the 7 minutes given. The lexical density testing is a byproduct of building speed; by having the students focused on vocabulary in this way it ensures that they are keeping some kind of standard in mind in terms of ensuring that quality isn't sacrificed in order to just increase speed.

The Process

Written language tends to be more lexically dense and less grammatically intense than spoken language. Part of testing lexical density is to teach students to switch codes when writing and ensure that they aren't getting too conversational.

To calculate lexical density there needs to be a bit of maths in play (sorry!) This is represented as a percentage and is created through the following formula:

Get students to give you their lexical density percentage and word count after they've written a paragraph in response to an essay question. You want to do this a couple of times a term so you can start to build a reliable data set.

The Data

This is the cool bit, and it comes especially in handy during parent-teacher interviews when parents are interested in seeing how their child is progressing in their writing skills. By using the graph function in Word you can start to assemble a visual representation of student growth in regards to word count in timed conditions. It also allows both the teacher and the student to identify patterns in lexical density, which allows students to meet Outcome 9 (the reflection outcome). 

Record the information with pen and paper each time the students undertake paragraph writing in this fashion. It's best if you have a separate sheet for each student - that way you can record the information in front of the students without them seeing what their peers are doing (not that it's really a secret, students are usually okay sharing numbers related to this stuff because it's not formally assessed). The reason this is useful is that if particular students don't partake in the activity, or they make a series of excuses, they can see how this looks on paper over time. The realisation that you are collecting this information on a regular basis will prompt a lot of these students into action.

Student A shows growth in word count over time. They were already performing at a high level in terms of generating long paragraphs in short amounts of time, however, seeing this information presented in this way helped them push themselves further. The lexical density was way too dense at the outset - a lot of overstretching of vocabulary. We took at a look at some of the vocabulary used and worked on making the language more concise, which had the added bonus of increasing the amount of analysis they could get across in the time given.

Student B struggled with the concept of these paragraphs at first as they were nervous about not performing well. Eventually they joined in after realising that I wasn't going to stop running the activity, and they actually did quite well.

Student C showed phenomenal growth in word count whilst maintaining lexical density.

Once Student D joined in they started to show growth as well.

Student E really pushed themselves to extend the word counts they were achieving in 7 minutes.

At the end of each semester I give the students a copy of the data (such as the graphs above) to make sure that they're partners in the process. The above graphs are also what are given to the parents. It doesn't necessarily all have to be done the way I've described it but the main point is that students are practising writing in timed conditions without having to commit to an entire essay every time.

Ergodic Literature

As Term 4 approaches I'm about shoulder-deep in preparing resources for HSC Extension English 1 and enjoying the opportunities afforded by the new syllabus. It's one of those things where the more you look, the more you find, and part of the challenge is in parsing the seemingly infinite bounty of literature that's on offer and figuring out what will work with my particular class when exploring the mandatory Literary Worlds module. There has been some excellent Professional Learning courtesy of the English Teachers Association that I found very helpful, and the networks of hardworking Extension teachers sharing resources on Facebook has been quite a boon as well, but, as with all things, I just can't get my head completely around something until I start trying to do it myself. 

One of the joys of Extension English 1 is that the course is broad enough to allow for a multitude of cautious creepings down various literary back-alleys. One such alleyway that stood out to my sensibilities as a 'must' was ergodic literature. In exploring what a writer does, and how literature is read, the most extreme avenue to travel down must surely be those narratives that require the most effort to read.

What Is It?

The most common definition (and like its grandfather, postmodernism, its a definition that's a little tricky to pin down) is that ergodic literature is any text that requires 'nontrivial effort' to read it. That is to say, beyond reading the words and turning the page, the text will require something extra from the reader if they are to grasp the beginnings of meaning intended by the author (and that intention may even be that meaning is created almost solely by the reader). 

Here is a PPT that contains a more in-depth explanation.

And here are some examples from ergodic texts that students can look at. 

Engaging Students

Okay, so my main reason for doing this with my class is that it'll let me share two of my all-time favourite texts: Building Stories and Riddley Walker. 

Building Stories - the box

Building Stories by Chris Ware is a unique graphic novel that comes in an A3-sized box. Within this box are 14 different texts in a range of mediums - newspaper, comics, pamphlet, cloth book, flip book - with no specified order for them to be read in. Most intriguingly, there is a map of a house that seems to indicate where each of the texts should or can be read. For example, one comic is to be read in the kitchen, so I read that one while having breakfast. Another text is linked to the bedroom, one to an armchair, etc, etc.

Note the schematic - this seems to indicate which part of a house links to each of the specific texts within the box

All 14 texts - I had to step back a fair way to fit them all in one photo!

Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker appears to be more like a regular novel on the surface. It's a comparatively slim post-apocalyptic text set out in the traditional fashion, however, where the reader has to do some work is in translating the first person narrative's invented dialect into something more identifiable. In setting his story set far into a post-nuclear future devoid of technology, Hoban has constructed a version of the English language that has distorted and disintegrated over time. Some words remain the same, some words are recognisable with a little work from the reader, and some words are maddeningly obscure and enigmatic in meaning. What's great about Riddley Walker is that the more you read of it the more meaning you begin to glean from the text - essentially because the reader, with concentration, becomes increasingly fluent in this new dialect.

After introducing these two texts to the class the next step is to let the students engage with them. I've selected two relatively-easy extracts from Riddley Walker, the opening page and a section in which the oft-mentioned mythical figure 'Eusa' seems to join the text as a speaking character, with the intention for students to read and then discuss what some of the words might mean.

Extracts here.

Independent Response
After students have been taken on this little tour of the ergodic genre the next step is to consolidate their thinking. Coming about six lessons or so into a look at the Literary Worlds module, the intention is that students should be familiar with a few different literary theories about reading by this point. I'll blog more about this at a later point, but the key ideas I want them to think about are:

• The text is the message (this is the traditional, formalist approach to reading).
• The reader creates the message in conversation with the author.
• The author's intentions are irrelevant as they cannot control what or how the reader reads.
• There is no single message in a text - the shifting nature of context changes what is read.
• Reading is a 'community' act - our literary competence comes with our experience of how literature is interpreted by others. 

So, with all this in mind, students should have a bit of time discussing and reflecting on ergodic texts before responding to the following question with a paragraph-length response:

Why would an author choose to write ergodic literature?

Which should give scope for a range of responses and, at the very least, let students start to iterate what they're thinking.

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.