Making Stronger Arguments (Stage 4)

Two years ago I had a Year 8 class who were doing a unit of work on Conservation. The framework was all about endangered animals and themes of sustainability (Cross-Curriculum Priorities ahoy!), with the driving English focus being 'Text Types'*. It was basically an opportunity to teach a range of writing modes that didn't fit elsewhere in our Year 8 curriculum - early forays into discursive writing (IE. Feature articles), poetry, a range of informational texts, and persuasive writing. 

(* I put 'Text Types' in inverted commas as I prefer to use the term 'genre'. The above are all different genres of writing. But more on that another time.)

Today I'll show you an idea for a lesson that I wrote later in my spare time. It marries together two of my favourite things - the mechanics of persuasive writing and Marsupial Moles. 

Now, I know what you're thinking... Why haven't these two things been put together before? My answer to this is - I don't know, I was just as baffled as you are as they seem such an obvious pairing. But, as they say, "there's no opportunity quite as golden as a Marsupial Mole" (okay, no one says this, but they definitely should).

Incidentally, this lesson would come after introducing what a Marsupial Mole is. I would do this in a separate lesson that looks at the differences in perspective between European and Aboriginal viewpoints of this amazing and seldom-seen creature. If you haven't heard of the Marsupial Mole, here's the crib notes:

• It's not a mole. It's a marsupial creature that lives in Central Australia - it's closest relative is the Bilby. 
• It basically has no eyes and doesn't need them - it spends the majority of its time swimming through sand under the surface of the desert.
• The Marsupial Mole has only been photographed a handful of times and Australian scientists have no idea how many of them are even in existence. 

Okay, now that's out of the way - here's what I would do with a class.

Firstly, we would look at four ways in which writers attempt to craft stronger arguments when writing persuasively. I picked just four so it would suit a mixed ability class and I don't want to overwhelm students. I want them to be able to identify what these things are so they could start experimenting in their own writing. Here are the techniques:

1. Synonyms
2. High Modality
3. Second Person Language
4. Rhetorical Questions

Notes on this can be found here - Making Stronger Arguments.

Students would then use these notes while reading two persuasive pieces about the Marsupial Mole and annotating them accordingly. This can be done individually or as a whole class activity, depending on the class. I would then project the pieces onto the board and read through them while making notes / highlighting certain sections with contributions from the students. The students would then copy the annotations onto their own copies. 

Model pieces here - Why the Marsupial Mole is the Coolest.

Things we would annotate:

• A text chain showing different terms for the Marsupial Mole (this allowed students to see how synonyms were used).
• Examples of second person language.
• Rhetorical questions and why they were asked.
• Modal terms - this involved comparing the two pieces to identify which one had higher modality.

At the end, I would then asked the students to identify which of the two pieces was more persuasive and why (the pieces differ in quality quite deliberately for this reason; they provide set standards for the students to work off). Students would then write their justification for which one is more persuasive using the metalanguage they've now learned.

In terms of backward mapping skills from Year 12 to 7, this services the need for students to build their familiarity with persuasive writing (think Craft of Writing in Year 12). It also works to support the NAPLAN writing task for Year 7 and 9 - which can be either persuasive or imaginative. 

Disclaimer: All the above resources have been created specifically for this blog in my own spare time.

Literacy and the Orca

Screenshot from the documentary Blackfish

Prospective English teachers (student teachers at university) are often told that the English method can be applied to every kind of text. One of the few parts of the senior syllabus that pays lip service to this is the Craft of Writing module in Year 12, in which informative texts are mentioned as one of the genres of writing that students will explore. Strangely though, despite this being mentioned in the module descriptor, there are no informative texts in the Module C prescriptions list nor is it expected for students to interact or engage with informative texts in the HSC Examination.

So why is it there?

If we consider that the HSC Examination implies the endpoint of what a student is expected to learn (in my mind it's the only truly summative assessment in the entire course of a student's primary and secondary schooling) then the logic follows that the curriculum for each stage should be backward-mapped from here. Yes, we don't asses informative texts in the HSC Examination, but the inclusion of this idea in the module descriptor is intended to support the literacy of our students. 

There is no specific Literacy subject in Stage 6 yet literacy is an integral part of our learning. The public is fixated on it, the government is fixated on it, and the media is fixated on it. We have NAPLAN and Minimum HSC Standards and PAT Testing but all of these things exist outside of the KLAs. We're often told that literacy should be taught in all subjects (and to some degree it is) but it often falls onto the shoulders of the English subject to show leadership in relation to it because reading and writing is our area. And it is - inescapably - embedded into the content dot points of our syllabus outcomes in ways that it isn't for other KLAs. 

The point I'm making here is that we should be building the understanding of our students in regard to reading informative texts because it's a key part of literacy. Having a sophisticated understanding of informative texts and how they work isn't going to be assessed directly in the HSC Examinations but it will be assessed indirectly in the sense that this kind of understanding is of invaluable benefit to students when they undertake a range of examinations across a range of KLAs. 

Where the Orcas Come In

In Year 10 at my school we have a unit of work called 'Charity and Change' that focuses on students identifying a charitable cause and pitching their own charity for a fictional sum of funding. In preparation for their project on this, the students are currently undertaking a case study on the documentary Blackfish and the issues it examines in relating to Orca captivity. In order to contextualise this it's necessary for students to have an understanding of what Orcas are and what their historical relationship with humans has been. 

In a sociology subject it would be fine to just have students examine the information directly, however, in English it becomes harder to link something as straightforward as this to the outcomes for Stage 5, especially if you've already created an assessment task that's tied into particular outcomes (in this case, EN5-1A, EN5-2A and EN5-8D). In order to make good use of a context lesson like this it can become a case of combing through the English syllabus content dot points in order to find windows into the requisite skills that will assist students in reading this genre of text.

So, before I get to the reading skills, I wanted to first have an information sheet supports the watching of Blackfish by covering the following content:

• What an Orca is and how it operates in the wild
• What makes them 'special' in terms of their intelligence
• The relationship between Orcas and the Yuin Aboriginal people of the South-East Australian coast
• The broader relationship between Orcas and human societies
• The current ecological status of Orcas 

All of this is included in this sheet: Orca Information

Then in terms of the skills that students would be using to read the text this is where the English outcomes needed to come in. I ended up finding the following content dot points to support this:

• EN5-2A: use comprehension strategies to compare and contrast information within and between texts, identifying and analysing embedded perspectives, and evaluating supporting evidence
• EN5-8D: examine how language is used to express contemporary cultural issues
• EN5-8D: explain and analyse cultural assumptions in texts, including texts by and about Aboriginal Australians

These have been used to construct some questions that will scaffold students in gaining a greater awareness of the processes we employ when reading informative texts. These questions should redirect student focus into using particular reading skills, such as:

• The strategies used to comprehend informative texts - such as the conventions used to structure said texts
• The ability to recognise perspectives
• Identifying where evidence has been used to support an argument or point
• Looking more closely at word choices and why they've been made
• Examining the Aboriginal perspective and contrasting attitudes that relate to it

A sheet of these questions can be found here: Orca Questions

The questions are broken up paragraph by paragraph so students don't get lost in the text. As 'whole text' comprehension isn't one of the skills being taught here it therefore becomes a waste of time not to direct student attention to specific parts of the text.

Happy reading!

Some Further Reading:

Eden: Paradise and Purgatory by the Sea - my visit to the Eden Killer Whale Museum 

Killer Whales Learn to Speak Dolphin - an interesting article on the concept of dolphin 'accents' and 'dialects' 

Defenders of Wildlife: Orca - a site with a lot of information about a specific Orca population 

The History of Whaling in Twofold Bay - the curious story of 'Old Tom', the Orca that worked alongside human whalers in Eden and Boydtown