Sentence Variety

I find it can be a little tricky to look at media consumption and journalism in the classroom these days. This isn't a comment on a lack of material - there's plenty that can be discussed - it's more a case of not necessarily wanting to politicise the room or (more precisely) not wanting to get waylaid by the partisan nature of today's media. 

In the lesson below I want to focus on writing skills and manipulation of language without students getting too fixated on the 'hot topics' these elements are invariably tied to. There are no doubt some great lessons that could focus on political metanarratives but in this case, when teaching Stage 5 (Year 9 in particular), I want to force a more laser-like focus onto the way things are said rather than what is being said.

It's a little cheesy and hokey, but the best way to do this is to invent a news story.

For a lesson on teaching sentence structure, we can start with this invented feature article extract:

Not really caring how people would react, controversial scientist Krayon Lewis published his research on a free website that could be accessed by anyone. He laughs in a mischievous way and I feel deeply uncomfortable. I want to go home. Who is this guy? Krayon is a botanical scientist yet he thinks about cars a lot. He recently drove from Melbourne to Brisbane.

"My research will revolutionise the world," he says confidently.

He picks up his research paper, looking around for an audience, and then reads aloud.

"Fuel made from orange peels are the future," he reads aloud.

No one is listening. I cringe when he laughs again. If this is his vision then I'm not sure how much attention he will get. Krayon keeps on laughing. The scientist will keep on cackling until I eventually leave the room. 

A printout of this extract can be found here.

Engaging with the piece

Read through the above extract with the students and then discuss sentence length with them. Where is the longest sentence? Where is the shortest? Ask students to use a highlighter to identify as many verbs as possible. 

After this has been done, introduce this PowerPoint. It takes students through the three different sentence types, models their construction, and prompts students to think about sentence diversity when writing. 

The PowerPoint presentation includes the following information:

Sentences: Using Variety

Slide 1. Sentence Types. 

There are three main kinds of sentences:

1. Simple sentences
2. Compound sentences
3. Complex sentences

In the next three slides you will see examples and explanations of each. Use these to come up with your own definitions and examples for each of the sentence types.

Slide 2. Simple Sentences.

A simple sentence is a single-clause sentence. 

A clause consists of just one verb.

The sentences here are all simple. 

Here are examples from the feature article:

• He recently drove from Melbourne to Brisbane.
• I want to go home.
• No one is listening.
• He laughs in a sinister way.
• Who is this guy?

These are simple sentences. This means they only have one verb. Where is the verb in each of the examples?

Slide 3. Compound Sentences.

Compound sentences are longer and have two independent clauses.

And, if, but, so yet, or, as - these are the connectives used to join clauses in compound sentences.

Here are some examples:

• Krayon is a botanical scientist yet he thinks about cars a lot.
• I cringe while he laughs again.
• He laughs in a mischievous way and I feel deeply uncomfortable.

These are compound sentences, which means they have two verbs and a connective. Where is the verb in each clause? And which part of the sentence is the connective?

Slide 4. Complex Sentences.

A complex sentence has multiple clauses that rely on each other.

The clauses are dependent on each other. This means that if you broke the sentence into simple sentences then only one of them would make sense as a sentence on its own, like this:

COMPLEX SENTENCE: "The scientist will keep on cackling until I eventually leave the room".

BROKEN INTO TWO SINGLE SENTENCES:

                The scientist will keep on cackling.

                Until I eventually leave the room.

If you read these two sentences completely on their own, which one would make more sense? Why?

Slide 5. Examples of Complex Sentences

There are lots of different kinds of complex sentences. Use the following to model your own complex sentence examples:

• Not really caring at all how people would react, controversial scientist Krayon Lewis published his research on a free website that could be accessed by anyone. 
• He picks up his research paper, looking around for an audience, and then reads aloud. 
• If this is his vision then I'm not sure how much attention he will get.

If we broke these up into separate clauses (and potentially removed any connectives), which clauses would work on their own as simple sentences?

Resources

Feature article extract - worksheet

Sentence Variety - powerpoint

After walking through the PowerPoint, students will be primed to use a variety of sentences in their own attempt to craft a feature article extract of a similar length. A second lesson could then prompt the class with a follow-up to the above extract in which Krayon Lewis is revisited one year later, or you can allow students to invent a story of their own devising.

Students can then swap stories with a peer and identify examples of each of the three sentence types. 

This resource was developed and adapted specifically for this blog. 

Author Mentors: Kate Veitch and Discursive Writing

This is the fourth and final part in a series on 'Author Mentors'. Each of these lessons utilise a short extract as a model to encourage student engagement in the same vein as the writing-focused modules of the NSW senior courses (Reading to Write in Year 11 and Craft of Writing in Year 12). In order, these have been:

• Context - Kurt Vonnegut
• Structure - Yuri Herrara
• Theme - Ellen Van Neerven

and now, as a means of promoting a more extended response:

• Discursive Writing - Kate Veitch

1. Using Authors to Create. The first thing to do here is to walk students through some broad steps for creating their own piece of writing. I will note here that I'm not too hung up on ensuring that the writing is 'discursive' per se, this part of the lesson is just about prompting some thinking and eliciting a response. In using a model text to create their own piece of writing, students should consider each of the following:

• Inspiration: An essential step with using any text as a model for one's writing is to read the text and examine the way that the author writes.
• Construction: The next step is for the student to craft their own writing in a similar fashion to the author (our mileage may vary here as it depends on what aspect of the author's work we choose to focus on).
• Imitation: The student looks at connecting their own writing to an author's and developing an awareness of similarity or areas of inspiration.
• Reflection: The final stage of this process is to reflect and use correct terminology while explaining how one's own writing works, and integrating an awareness of the previous steps.

Now that students have an idea of what they can do, practise with a short stimulus as a mini-lesson. I like this quote from The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same colour as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.

Students use the stimulus to do a miniature version of the Inspiration, Construction, Imitation, Reflection schema from above. Instructions follow:

Read the sentence above, craft your own line of description in the same way, describe which parts are similar, and reflect on how the sentence works. 

We're not looking for a long or especially creative piece here. A student who is adept at creative writing does not necessarily need this level of scaffolding. We're looking, however, at ways in which we can work with all Year 10 students - which includes students who may not be confident with composition and reflection. By reducing the task to a single sentence and scaffolding it, we allow such students the opportunity to walk through the process with guidance and to learn exactly what they'll need to do when they eventually get to Year 12. 

2. Extract - First Impressions. Now we'll look at an extract from a great non-fiction essay by Kate Veitch called 'Small Eye'. In NSW English parlance, this could be called 'discursive' writing. 

• 'Small Eye' extract.

We'll then contextualise the piece by starting with some general questions that ensure students have a grounded understanding of what they're looking at. Here are four such questions:

1. What is the text about?
2. What motif appears throughout the text?
3. How does this connect to the theme of the text?
4. Find one phrase/word choice with positive connotations and one phrase/word choice with negative connotations.

3. Explanation - Non-Fiction or 'Discursive' Writing. This is as good as any opportunity to introduce students to discursive writing. In giving an introductory overview of this genre of writing, we'll outline just a few key features rather than going too in-depth. I would start with:

• Written from the writer's personal perspective (first person point-of-view)
• Focuses on a subject or topic that the writer wants to discuss.
• Use of anecdotes, facts, history, humour to entertain and educate the reader.

Students then use the above as a guide to brainstorm the ways in which 'Small Eye' fits the description of discursive writing. 

4. Examining the Text. In continuing what is essentially the 'inspiration' stage, it's useful to now get students to look more closely at the text to consider how each element is used by Veitch with specific purpose. A worksheet is included here:

• Examining 'Small Eye'. 

Students work through the examples to identify and explain each of the techniques/non-fiction devices used. This includes:

• Adverbs, Ellipsis, Humour, Word Choice: How does the author control the way the reader feels about the text?
• Anecdotes: How do the little stories told by the author add detail to their ideas?
• Epigraph: How does the introductory quote make the theme clearer to the reader?
• Logos: In what way are facts figures, and/or logic used to make the writing more convincing?
• Repetition: In what way does the repeating of ideas or words help to tie the text together?

5. Construct and Imitate. Students should now have some preparatory knowledge that allows them to embark upon their own piece of writing with a similar theme. Provide some images along with the instructions below (two stimulus images are included in the PowerPoint at the end of this blog). I will mention here that, at this point, the 'lesson' may stretch into multiple lessons. 

Create your own piece of personal non-fiction writing. You must:

• Write 300-500 words
• Use at least one of the images as a thematic prompt - what can you say about one (or both) of these things? [Note: One image prompts discussion of travel, the other photography]
• Use 2-3 of the techniques featured in the Examining 'Small Eye' worksheet from the previous part of the lesson. 

6. Reflection. With the growing emphasis on 'reflecting' on one's own composition that has arisen over the last two decades in the Australian curriculum and NSW syllabuses, it becomes necessary to explicitly teach this as part of the compositional process. In effect, it's basically just an integrated way of getting students to engage in analysis - albeit focused on their own writing. 

Step 1. Examine Your Writing. Highlight and annotate parts of your text that might show:

• Where you have taken inspiration from Kate Veitch's 'Small Eye'.
• Where you have used techniques such as: similes, metaphors, motifs, anecdotes, allusion, alliteration, imagery, effective verbs, carefully-chosen adverbs, etc. 
• Where you have described things.
• Where you spoke really clearly about the main idea.

Step 2. Explain Your Writing. Write a paragraph 'reflecting' on one aspect of your writing. You can do this by following this formula:

1. Introduce the example you are talking about.
2. Quote the example.
3. Identify the reason why it was highlighted during your annotation.
4. Explain why or how you used this example. 

And there you have it. Some or all of the above might seem too explicit but I really do think there are a lot of students in Year 9 or 10 who need to be shown exactly what it is we're looking for, especially as we live in a society that increasingly swims in a stream of online data that can leave the younger generation feeling a bit adrift when it comes to more traditional forms of writing. 

The Author Mentors sequence is designed to walk students back through the steps of analysis and composition. This is hopefully done in a way that leaves no stone unturned when it comes to a student's own comprehension of what it is that Year 12 requires from them in terms of composing their own imaginative or discursive writing. There's no harm in repeating things that students have already been taught, it's this sort of repetition that's so effective in Maths pedagogy and helps to build student automaticity. Creative writing is a hard ask for students who feel uncreative or (dare I say it) just aren't interested in creative writing and probably never will be. By breaking it down into constituent parts and using discrete extracts that reduce the cognitive demand of reading, we can hone in on explicitly teaching some key skills.

It all works as scaffolding. If we start in junior grades then it becomes easier to lift this scaffolding away for Years 11 and 12. 

The above lesson(s) can be found as a PowerPoint here.

Acknowledgement: The following material has been adapted and modified specifically for this blog. I would like to acknowledge some of my colleagues - Ashleigh Galea, Lauren Hage, Amra Winter - who helped develop some additional material not included here.   

Creative Writing: Reinforcing an Idea

One of the challenges of teaching Year 7 is that we often have to determine the level of understanding that a class is at. We may often find that this varies wildly from year to year. Students in metropolitan secondary schools are often drawn from a range of primary schools, and this variation in context can lead to ever-shifting permutations of Year 7 classes where students sitting alongside each other have come from different primary schools where curriculum has been interpreted and delivered in many different ways. 

In short, we can't really assume too much. 

Instead, we utilise assessment for learning - informal evaluation of student ability gathered through activities that act as a litmus test of classroom efficacy. We watch how students react and work with certain activities to gauge their ability level. We check for understanding. And then, after this, we engage to some extent in a process of universal design - re-adjusting how we pitch the lesson so that all students can access it in some way. 

Sometimes, or oftentimes, the general ability level of a mixed ability Year 7 class requires us to start from scratch so we can better understand what's happening inside the learning of our students. The activity in this blog is borne from such a context. It speaks to the idea that one needs to go back to basics to ensure that an intellectually-diverse collective of students are brought onto the same page. Even high-performing students with gifts for critical thinking will benefit from having things broken down to their components as this allows for new approaches that they may not have considered, or explains things they may have subconsciously wondered about. In the task below we are looking at one aspect of imaginative writing. With Year 7, or any mixed-ability class, I often find that it's much more effective to only focus on one skill or idea at a time.

In this case I'm aiming to teach the use of increased vocabulary to reinforce a theme or idea. This means that I won't get bogged down in spelling, or grammar, or sentence structure, or punctuation, or any number of other things. I want to look at this skill in a vacuum. I want to quarantine it off so I can examine it in on a plate of glass in the cold unyielding light of a microscope. And so students, who are looking at this microscope slide alongside me, can better understand how to "show their working" (to borrow a phrase from Maths). The time for synthesising a range of disparate skills is a whole other lesson - we simply just can't teach everything at once all the time; it's overwhelming for both the teacher and the student. 

Here is a PowerPoint that breaks down this skill through the use of a modelled paragraph - Make Your Idea Stick.

1. The goal is to get students to come up with an idea or theme and to then explore and reinforce this using a variety of words.
2. First, we model this with an excerpt from an age-appropriate novel. In this case, I've used Victor Kelleher's Taronga. The idea is that he wants to show his audience a version of the future where society has broken down and everything we know has been destroyed.
3. Give the students a copy of the paragraph from the PPT.
4. Students highlight any words that show that things have broken down, gone wrong, or been destroyed. Direct students to look for nouns, adjectives, verbs that demonstrate this. This will create a visual guide to a subject-specific set of vocabulary within the paragraph.
5. After students have had a chance to find their words, work together as a class to construct a highlighted version on the board with the 3rd slide of the PPT. The 4th slide of the PPT then has a completed one for the class to compare their collaborative version to.
6. Students then draw arrows from each word to the next, creating a text chain that ties the paragraph together and again visually demonstrates how subject-specific vocabulary has conveyed Kelleher's idea. 
7. The final step is for students to then write their own paragraph. If they're stuck for an idea it will up to the teacher to pick one for them, something different to the Kelleher model. It could be something like: a character is amazed by something they've seen or a character feels a sense of immense dread related to their surroundings or depict a world where modern technology was never invented. The possibilities are endless.

I'm a big fan of teaching students these text chains. The real name of this grammatical element of writing is 'lexical chain', and it exists in texts as a reflection of said text's overall cohesion. Well-developed or expert use of lexical chains improves clarity for the reader and 'builds the field' of a topic that is being explored. Teaching this isn't restricted to just English, I've used it also with History and Aboriginal Culture classes, and have seen it used really well in Science.  

Everything Old is New Again

An image from The Bad Sleep Well

Are remakes a new phenomenon? The short answer is 'no'. There is a fallacy in pop culture that cinema is becoming increasingly unoriginal - that we are awash in an endless sea of remakes, reimaginings, sequels, prequels, adaptations, and franchises. Perhaps top of this list is the idea that superhero films are ruining cinema. 

I'm not here to venture an opinion on the quality of said superhero films, I tend to believe that their quality varies depending on a range of factors, however, I would argue that any perceived lack of variety could find its parallels in other eras of fiction.

• Martial Arts films of the '70s and '80s.
• Spy novels of the '60s.
• Action films of the '80s and '90s.
• Western films of the '30s, '40s, and '50s.
• Penny Dreadfuls of the 19th century.
• Spaghetti Westerns of the '60s.
• Teen comedy films of the '00s.
• Vampire/Supernatural novels of the late '00s. 

And so on.

A generic formula responds to the desires of the market as much now as in previous eras, and the quality in such genres was as variable then as it is now. 

Something that I find quite fascinating about cinema in particular is the way in which even the most celebrated 'original' films are the culmination of a long echo chamber of ideas that are borrowed and refracted over time. Here is one example:

1. Revenge of the Sith (2005) includes a scene in which Palpatine formally establishes the beginning of the Empire. During this scene, the speech he makes is intercut with shots of Anakin murdering Palpatine's enemies. This pays direct homage to the baptism scene in The Godfather, in which Micheal Corleone consolidates his place at the head of the family while his underlings orchestrate the murder of rival mob bosses. Both films deal with the rise and establishment of a corrupt power.
   
2. The Godfather (1972) begins with a big wedding reception where a mafia don's daughter has just gotten married to a young man who has worked his way into this shady family. Journalists are parked just outside the main action, photographing the various high profile figures in attendance. This scene deliberately replicates a similar scene at the beginning of Akira Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well, in which a company kingpin's daughter has just gotten married and journalists watch from outside while discussing the various high profile figures in attendance. Both films deal with a Machiavellian patriarch whose legacy is steeped in violence and crime.
   
3. The Bad Sleep Well (1960) is a modern Japanese adaptation of Hamlet. Instead of a medieval Danish court of intrigue and murder, the action is set in the corporate boardrooms of corrupt Japanese businessmen. Like Hamlet with his wavering quest for revenge, Nishi is a young company man who hides his identity while working to expose the men who killed his father. 
4. Hamlet (1599) is one of the most well-known stories of all time and perhaps Shakespeare's greatest tragedy. It is not, however, a story entirely of Shakespeare's creation. Shakespeare is thought to have directly remade a now-lost play that also featured a Danish prince named Hamlet who is urged by a ghost to pursue revenge.
   
5. Hamlet (c. 1580s) is the suspected name of a play by Thomas Kyd, a highly influential figure in Elizabethan theatre. Referred to as Ur-Hamlet by scholars, this play likely leaned on the 'hero-as-fool' trope, which flows back into the untraceable realms of ancient storytelling. It is also thought to be a loose retelling of a Scandinavian folk tale about a prince named Amleth. 
6. Amleth (c. 1100s) is a folk tale in which a prince dresses himself in rags and pretends to be insane as a means to disguise his quest for revenge against his uncle. This uncle, Fengo, murdered Amleth's father so he could marry his mother Gerutha. Fengo eventually sends Amleth to England with two escorts carrying a letter instructing the English king to kill the prince. Amleth, however, switches this letter so that the escorts get killed instead, and he returns to Denmark to watch his own funeral and then finally take revenge on is uncle. Like Hamlet, The Bad Sleep Well, The Godfather, and Star Wars: The Revenge of the Sith, this story deals with the theme of corruption and the extreme behaviours that surround it. 

So, as we can see, even Shakespeare isn't immune from this 'unoriginality' problem. Here are some other examples of great films that can be traced to earlier texts that explore the same themes.

• A Fistful of Dollars (1964) - a spaghetti western remake of the 1961 samurai film Yojimbo, which was an adaptation of the hardboiled detective novel Red Harvest (1929). Thematic core: an outsider takes on a lawless community.
• A Bug's Life (1998), an animated film about a misfit putting together a group of warriors to save an ant colony from an evil grasshopper, which sounds a lot like the Western classic The Magnificent Seven (1960), which is a direct remake of Seven Samurai (1954). Thematic core: the value of community and team-work.
• The Searchers (1956) is a famous Western based on a 1954 novel of the same name. 1970s films as varied as the seedy crime dramas Taxi Driver (1976) and Hardcore (1979), and the sci-fi epic Star Wars (1977), and the more recent television series Breaking Bad (2000s) and the film Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) all draw upon plot elements or iconic shots from The Searchers. Thematic core: the anti-hero's journey. 

And here are some films that challenge the notion that 'original' stories in cinema have ever been common.

• Gladiator (2001) is recognisable to most as a throwback to the sword-and-sandals epics of the 1950s and 1960s. Dig a little deeper and you'll find The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), which tells the same story. 
• The most famous cinematic versions of Ben-Hur (1959), The Wizard of Oz (1939), and The Ten Commandments (1956) are not the first film versions of these stories. All were made as silent films in the mid-1920s first. 
• Star Wars (1977) used the 1958 samurai epic The Hidden Fortress as both a narrative and stylistic influence. George Lucas replicated the idea of a kidnapped princess and a grizzled samurai, as well as the narrative choice of telling his story from the point of view of two comical and lowly characters. He also 'borrowed' Akira Kurosawa's way of using vertical wipes to transition from one scene to another. The Japanese director's influence is so keenly felt in the Star Wars trilogy that Rian Johnson would borrow stylistically from Kurosawa's 1980s samurai epics Ran and Kagemusha much later in The Last Jedi (2017).
  

Some of the above are more obvious than others but what's interesting is that none of the famed directors responsible for the above classic films would even try to hide their influences if asked. There's a tendency in pop criticism to reject texts that aren't original or to bemoan the replication of ideas. But, like the great painters who obsessively toiled on a singular topic or style, or playfully subverted each other's works to add new meaning to common themes, should storytellers not also be lauded for mining common material in new ways? These directors and writers are combining old ideas with new genres, or diving deeper into a particular story to explore a new context.

There are, after all, only 3, 6, 7, or 36 types of stories (depending on which writer you trust).

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

Ursula Le Guin's famous short story 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas' is a text with an endless lifespan in relation to the classroom. It's relatively short, which means that it's accessible to a range of readers. It has depth and a certain ideological ambiguity, which means that it's provocative in terms of forcing the reader to take a position on the ideas its raises. And it works as an exercise in analysing generic conventions and the impact of context. Simply put - it's beautiful and timeless.

It can be used with Year 8, Year 9, Year 10, and Year 11 students, and its the sort of text that will provoke some interesting and highly disparate responses from students. In order to cater for a range of responses and abilities, the text can be unpacked in a variety of ways:

1. Start by getting students to respond to some comprehension questions.
2. This can be followed by some critical analysis - students can begin identifying some techniques, thinking about authorial purpose in relation to writing craft, and the story's overall design.
3. Students can then look at evaluating some of the 'big ideas' that Le Guin explores. This also ties into her use of genre and the purpose behind her choice of subject matter.
4. Lastly, with some information about Le Guin's context provided, students can then look beyond the story and start making some connections between the text and Le Guin's world, and the text and their world. 

I've included some examples of the above in a PowerPoint that can be used (after reading through the story): 

Omelas Analysis.

WARNING: There is a paragraph in the first page or so that focuses on some very 1960s concepts in terms of 'free love' and sexual liberation. I think, perhaps dependent on the year group, the story works better without this element as it can shift the focus a little too much. I would simply chop this bit out altogether, it's quite easily edited out with minimal impact on the larger narrative. I have no problem with bowdlerisation if it allows for a smoother lesson without distractions!

Punk Punk - A Gallery of Subgenres

The -punk suffix genres can be a great discussion starter; there are various permutations and sub-categories that force or push stories in certain directions, and that writers experiment by combining elements to create new science fiction subgenres by leaning into particular aesthetics and ideas. 

Without taking retroactive classifications into account, the cyberpunk genre is unarguably where it all all started. Cyberpunk combines a dystopian near-future setting with a heavy emphasis on emerging technologies; in the 1980s this meant things like the internet, virtual reality, and practical body modification. Cyberpunk became a prominent subgenre after William Gibson helped to define it in his groundbreaking 1984 novel Neuromancer.

Just for fun, here are a range of other subgenres that have developed in the years since, each of which use the -punk suffix as a marker to let audiences know they are engaging with a fictional world. The various subgenres explore potential futures through highly specialised aesthetics - some of them are superficial in outlook, emphasising style over narrative, whereas others hone in on particular themes and concerns.

Steampunk: The most popular of the -punk subgenres (after the 80s/90s computer tech of cyberpunk) is the Victorian-era aesthetic of steampunk, which is perhaps as much about cosplay and fandom as it is about colonial-flavoured alternative realities. Think Jules Verne, The Golden Compass, some Studio Ghibli films.

Dieselpunk: Most of the -punk subgenres are heavily fixated on a particular aesthetic and its through this that the genre is defined. In this sense, dieselpunk presents alternative realities built from combustible engines and 1930s tech. See: Indiana Jones, The Rocketeer, the comic series Hellboy, the first Captain America film.

Clockpunk: Clockpunk is a subgenre that draws on Renaissance designs and iconography to present an alternative sci-fi realm that images a post-medieval world of light and strength. Think Da Vinci, conquistadors, 15th century Europe.

Rococopunk: This seems to be more stylistic than an actual genre of storytelling. It relates to a combination of cyberpunk and rococo/baroque fashion. One of the best things about the -punk suffix is that the suffix itself has the power to inspire bold new combinations of history and storytelling, with fandoms branching out to create their own costumes from the most flowery recesses of their imagination. When I hear 'Rococopunk' I mostly think of music videos like The Killers 'Mr Brightside' or Adam and the Ants.

Atompunk: When 1950s atomic-age aesthetics are used to present an alternative future with a decidedly retro look. Sometimes called 'Raygun Gothic', used to describe everything from The Jetsons to the original series of Star Trek or the film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Biopunk: Biopunk is a sci-fi subgenre that focuses on biotechnology and synthesised biology. Think David Cronenberg's films eXistenZ or Crimes of the Future, the animal-splicing of Island of Dr Moreau, H.R. Giger's monster designs. A genre that explores the blurring of lines between technology and nature, and the disturbing consequences that might ensue.

Solarpunk: An aesthetic built on a hypothetical utopian future scenario in which climate, environmental, and sustainability issues have been solved. It functions as both a subgenre of sci-fi and art, and can also be observed in the more speculative flourishes of architecture and town planning.

Formicapunk: This is a recent branch that demonstrates the way that the -punk genre tree will always continue to grow and revisit territory in new ways. Formicapunk leans heavily on retro-futurism and the stylistic flourishes of the 80s. Also known as casettepunk. You already know this look and love it.

Lunarpunk: A less-developed idea but one in which scenarios have been put forth where sustainable technology is combined with Wicca, supernatural, and pagan-esque iconography. 

Decopunk: Calling upon the aesthetics of the Art Deco movement, this subgenre combines 1920s architecture with sci-fu futurism... hello Metropolis! Aside from the superficial elements that contribute to a particular look, this subgenre also alludes to fascism and Italian futurism.

Feudalpunk: A personal favourite. Feudalpunk combines sci-fi tropes with medieval settings and scenarios in order to explore the intersection of society, control of knowledge, and the devastation of technologies beyond our understanding. It's not a popular subgenre but it certainly exists, see: A Canticle for Leibowitz, Gene Wolfe's novels, the original plans for Alien 3, Riddley Walker, and Dune.

Steelpunk: The uglier, updated, more industrial son of dieselpunk. Rivets, hardware, and pollution abound in this grimy post-apocalyptic permutation. Common in '90s and '00s visions of the future - see films like The Terminator, Mad Max, Robocop, The Edge of Tomorrow.

Silkpunk: A steampunk alternative that draws on Asian antiquity rather than the Victorian era. First identified by Chinese-American writer Ken Liu, this subgenre has been a point of contention in relation to accusations of cultural appropriation - with some Asian writers asserting that its co-opting by Western authors serves as a creative intellectual cousin to colonialism or exploitation. 

Elfpunk: Elfpunk transports fae and elven characters into a gritty urban setting - exploring a juxtaposition of the faerie realm with motorcycles, rock bands, and nightclubs.

Sandalpunk: This one combines technology and speculative worlds with alternative versions of ancient European and Middle Eastern civilisations. Examples include Stargate, various depictions of Atlantis, and 300.

Stonepunk: Stonepunk does the same thing as other -punk subgenres but with dinosaurs and/or a prehistoric setting. The Flintstones didn't set out to slot into this genre (it hadn't been invented yet) but it retroactively fits the bill! Perhaps more of a fantasy derivative than sci-fi.

Cattlepunk: This is the territory where sci-fi meets the Western - cyborg cowboys, robot horses, and super-powered railways abound. This genre perhaps exist mostly as an excuse to keep the tropes of the Western genre alive into the 21st century. Examples include Cowboys and Aliens, the comic East of West, the Will Smith movie Wild Wild West, Westworld, and the TV series Firefly.

And, as far as I know, that's pretty much it for the moment. There are others that don't feel as developed or don't seem differentiated enough from other genres (nanopunk, hopepunk, capepunk, oceanpunk, nowpunk, mythpunk) so I've left these out. Perhaps one day we'll see an Indigenous Australian approach that things like Cleverman could retroactively fit into (ochre-punk?) If you know any other -punk genres that I haven't mentioned, please let me know!

Disclaimer: This is an expanded version of a Twitter thread I wrote five months ago. Most of the images were sourced through Pinterest, where such things are shared and shared again in an endless recursive loop. If you are the artist of any of these pictures and would like credit or for the image to be removed, just let me know and I'll do that.

Happy Halloween: Tag Someone

Looking for something Halloweeny and fun as we nudge our way through the final term of the year? Today's post features a Stage 4 or 5-aimed story (depending on ability) that would work as part of a wider Horror-themed unit that aims to teach generic conventions, or even just as a stand-alone lesson focused on creative writing.  

Before looking at the story, students will need to be primed on short story structure. If they're not familiar, this could involve brainstorming or copying some notes that covers the following:

Structuring a Short Story

There are three main parts to every short story: a beginning, a middle, and an ending. These parts are referred to by these terms:

1. Orientation = the beginning. This should contain enough information for the reader to know what is going on, who the characters are, what the setting is, etc.
2. Complication = the middle. This presents a problem to be solved, increases tension, and requires a response.
3. Resolution = the ending. This is where the complication gets resolved.

Sometimes a story can move these three parts around; some stories begin with the complication and then have a flashback to an orientation. The resolution can also take one of the four main following forms:

• Cliffhanger: a story that ends by resolving one complication with the addition of a new one, or leaves a key question unanswered.
• Twist: something unexpected and surprising happens; usually foreshadowed.
• Reflection: the protagonist (or another character) thinks back on the events of the story and considers what they have learned.
• Circular: the story ends where it began.
  

Reading a Short Story

The story is only three pages long so it's easy enough to cover in one lesson with time for some follow-up. Read through 'Tag Someone' with the students (you would probably want to do this soon, I suspect the technology referenced in the story will become out of date before we know it) and then have some time discussing it a little. 

Story is here: Tag Someone.

Analysing a Short Story

Students then analyse the components with some connection to thinking about the horror genre in particular. The worksheet below covers the purpose of an orientation, how the complication functions as a reflection of the horror genre and the way it explores the fears of our times, and the type of resolution that has been used by the author. 

Worksheet here: Tag Questions.

If you have more time afterwards, students could be asked to start thinking of their own short horror story, the fear they'd like to explore, and how they would structure it.

Happy Halloween :) 

Disclaimer: The above activity was written specifically for this blog. 

Teaching Embedded Clauses

One of my favourite things to teach Year 7 or 8 is the embedded clause. It sounds boring but it's relatively simple and students always have fun with the idea of manipulating language in unexpected ways. Embedded clauses can be taught effectively in thirty minutes or so in just three steps.

Step 1: Model an embedded clause

An example, inspired by Louis Sachar's Holes but not actually in the text:

Mr Sir squinted in the moonlight, his hand wavering over his gun, and told Stanley to get out of the way.

The embedded clause in this case is the middle part of the sentence that sits between the commas. The function of this clause is to add additional information to the situation, and it turns the line from a compound sentence to a complex one. 

An easy way of explaining the clause to students is to ask them to remove it from the sentence and then read aloud what remains to see if it still makes sense. If it does, the removed section was an embedded clause and the sentence itself was a successfully complex one.

Students should copy the above modelled sentence, highlight the embedded clause, and label it as such. 

Step 2: Scaffolding an embedded clause

The next step is to provide a sentence without an embedded clause and to ask students where such a clause could be inserted. It's important to make it a bit silly to offset the dryness of an activity focused on grammar. Here is such a sentence:

Spaghetti O'Jones laughed and grabbed a hold of the tortoise.

Students will start to get a feel for this by nominating places where a clause could go. The 'his hand wavering over the gun' clause from the Holes sentence works well enough as an example for discussion purposes. The [ ] indicates potential places to add the clause, and commas have been inserted accordingly to show students how to potentially punctuate it as well:

[ ], Spaghetti O'Jones, [ ] , laughed , [ ] , and , [ ] , grabbed a hold of the tortoise , [ ] .

For the ones at the beginning and end, this can be an opportunity to talk about 'reversibility' with complex sentences. If the sentence still works with the clauses reversed then students can label it correctly as a complex sentence.

Anyway, students then pick one of the following clauses below and insert it in one of the above spots. 

• EG. Spitting pasta everywhere
• EG. Sneezing uncontrollably
• EG. Kicking over the daffodils
• EG. Something else of student's choice

I would take this opportunity to walk the room and read the new sentences students create, laughing or marveling with them at what they've been able to put together.

Step 3: Without Training Wheels

Students then use an embedded clause to create their own sentence from scratch. 

Disclaimer: The above activity was written specifically for this blog.  

Teaching 'Setting' with Holes

Setting/Characterisation is one of the criteria assessed in NAPLAN for the years in which creative writing is prompted. In fact, in comparing the Persuasive and Creative options for the NAPLAN writing section, this is the only real point of difference that comes up in the criteria. Without getting too much into it, Setting and Characterisation are conflated on the understanding that both of these textual elements require sufficient detail and a sustained approach across the length of the student's writing. 

I think there's something in this definition.

For example, if a student introduces their setting at the start of their piece, then we want to see them remember that this is the setting right until the end - and the writing should reflect this. If it's a freezing tundra then we want to see constant and varied reminders of this throughout the text, and we also need to see that events and characters within the text interact with this setting appropriately. 

The same is said for characterisation. If a character is dressed in a cumbersome pizza slice suit, then we  need to read about them sweating throughout the story, or the way in which the suit restricts their movements, and that other characters comment on the bizarre appearance of this pizza slice protagonist.

In Stage 4, I have on occasion used the novel Holes by Louis Sachar to teach the literary concept of setting. This can be done across the first 45 pages in relation to the story being set in Texas's Chihuahuan Desert. Before I demonstrate some of the ways this can be explored, here's a quick paraphrasing of what Stage 4 English says about setting:

• EN4-1A contains a content point that asks students to recognise and analyse the ways in which setting interacts with events or characterisation. 
• EN4-2A contains a content point in which students are encouraged to use textual evidence related to setting when justifying a point of view.

So, as we can see, by the time students are in Years 7 and 8 they should be looking at the more complex ways in which setting operates as an element within a text and be able to use their knowledge about this when analysing said text. Here are three ways in which this can be addressed in relation to Holes:

Activity 1 - Stretching Our Creative Muscles

1. Before the students even have a chance to read Holes, I ask them to spend 10 minutes writing about their own setting for a story. Free reign is given here, students can set their story anywhere, anytime. I usually walk around the room and give students a range of options to prompt their imagination - do they like the beach? Bushwalking? Perhaps they'd like to go to an alien world, or a frozen wasteland? Haunted houses, grimy cities, and ancient civilisations all get a look in as well.  
2. Then we go off and do something else for the bulk of the lesson. I like to let their descriptions sit for a little bit, perhaps while the class does one of the other setting-related activities.
3. At the end of the lesson, for about 20 minutes, I then direct students to read through their descriptions and monitor how they used vocabulary to build a setting. This means highlighting any adjectives they've used, and circling any imagery that relates to four of the major senses (sight, smell, sound, touch). Students then come up with an additional 5-10 adjectives or sensory imagery that could have been used in their description.

Activity 2 - Purpose and Complexity

1. Read the opening chapter of Holes as a class and then discuss what sort of setting this is. Students collect together any details that let them know what this setting is, and reflect on what impression Sachar wants the reader to get.
2. Then we read on until we get to Chapter 3, where the protagonist Stanley Yelnats is travelling to the Juvenile Correction Facility at Camp Green Lake via bus. There is a part in this chapter where Stanley thinks about where he is going and expresses gratitude that he will at least be able to go for a swim in the 'Lake'. 

Stop here and explain what irony is. I look at three types of irony and usually a little bit of discussion will get students to recognise that sarcasm is one of these - this is a good way of starting off.

• Verbal Irony: Also known as sarcasm, this is when someone says something that is the opposite of what they mean.
• Situation Irony: This is when we expect something to happen in a story only for it to be subverted or flipped by the writer.
• Dramatic Irony: This is when there is a disconnect between what the audience knows and what a character knows. When the audience knows more about something than a character this can create tension or humour.

    3. I ask students here to consider how Sachar has used dramatic irony. The answer is the bit where            Stanley thinks he is going to be able to swim at Camp Green Lake. Thanks to the opening chapter         (which features no characters and only focuses on setting), the reader is aware that this lake is                 completely dry - although Stanley is not. We see now how setting interacts with character and                 the novel's structure in a more complex fashion than students perhaps realised, and the teacher can         help make it clear here that the entire purpose of the opening chapter was to allow the reader to            know about the setting before Stanley does.

Activity 3 - Textual Evidence

1. Students read Chapters 5 to 7. If you wanted to do this in the classroom, I find that this will take about half an hour. This works well if you read to the students (which is valuable for a whole range of reasons) because the second half of the lesson then has the students working more independently. 
2. After finishing Chapter 7, we look at Reinforcing Setting. That is to say, how has Sachar continuously made references to the setting and shown how this setting impacts on the characters? Students will at this point be asked to gather 8 quotations from Chapters 5 to 7 that demonstrate this.
3. For some students, this could be the first time they've been asked to identify quotes as a form of textual evidence. With that in mind, I think it's useful to give students the page numbers so they don't waste time aimlessly flipping through pages and disengaging altogether. I do the first one for them so they can see exactly what they need to do (NOTE: the page numbers refer to the edition of Holes pictured above. Even though the cover may be the same, be aware that some page numbers may differ a tiny bit due to different printings having slightly different font size):

• P.17, "They were dripping with sweat", this shows the way in which the setting is affecting the characters.
• P.19
• P.21
• P.26
• P.28
• P.32
• P.35
• P.36

What I find interesting about this last activity is that some students will pause and ask how a character being thirsty relates to the setting, and this allows for discussions of more subtle uses of setting beyond "It was dry and hot". 

 

The above activities can of course be adapted for use with a variety of other novels too.

Disclaimer: The above activities were adjusted specifically for this blog. 

Scaffolding Paragraph Construction

If there's one thing I was never explicitly taught as an English student back in the 1990s, it was how to write an essay. Even in my time as a senior student, I don't remember ever being conscious of how to write one... I wrote them, of course, and I got good enough marks to justify my later life choices, but essay and paragraph structure weren't ever focused on in my days as a student. 

This presented me with a challenge when I became a teacher. The day I became an English teacher was the day when I first had to start thinking about how essays were written. I observed my fellow teachers and backwards-engineered A range student responses, learned about PEEL paragraphs for the first time and, a bit later, ALARM. I've since come across a range of acronyms that help to formularise and quantify the process of paragraph writing in English... PEAL, TEAL, PEEEL, ICAV, CLACEL, OREO. 

I don't begrudge any of these. Whatever works, right? I just don't have the experience of learning these as a student, and I think it's important for teachers to have such experiences to call upon. Being inside the learning process as student is very different to constructing it as teacher.

I've since tried my hand at writing in the aforementioned formulae for this precise reason, sometimes under fake student names so that I can get an honest appraisal from my teaching peers (a daunting process, let me tell you!). Thankfully, my essays have received appropriately high marks when I've done the 'fake student' thing, but I have to admit that I don't think I do my best writing in the context of using paragraph formulae and scaffolds. When I meet students who have an instinct for writing I encourage them to avoid squeezing themselves into the acronyms, at least as much as our system allows.

That's enough reflection for now. Below is a task that I wrote a couple of years ago while I was thinking about paragraph writing. I've since used it with Stage 5 classes (both Year 9 and Year 10) and it works pretty well. 

It relates to the documentary Blackfish and aims to familiarise students with the idea of supporting a concept statement with relevant examples and analysis. The task does not require students to come up with said examples and analysis as I wanted to explicitly and specifically hone in on the actual construction of the paragraph. As I've explained before on this blog, I think we sometimes get too open-ended as teachers and become afraid to show students exactly how things are done because we don't want to be seen as doing the work for them. Unfortunately, this approach can leave students completely in the dark and they can become unwilling to attempt tasks that they perceive as just too complex.

Here is my thinking:

• Academic paragraph writing is complex. It requires the synthesis of multiple skills - conceptualising, judicious selection of evidence, the ability to write sentences in a variety of structures, use of appropriate vocabulary in a high modality, use of a wide and subject-specific vocabulary (IE. Metalanguage), the use of a paragraph structure that makes internal sense whilst also operating within the wider context of an essay, and memorisation of detailed content that can be recalled in essay-writing contexts that may not allow for notes to be on hand.  
• In order to get students to even start doing the above, I need to remove some of those skills from the playing field. I need to zoom-in on just one or two things and make sure students are confident with these first, and I need to do it in a way where students have the ability and confidence to complete the task whilst also still learning new things (that zone of proximal development we're all familiar with from our university pedagogy days).
• In this particular task below, students are being taught TWO things - the ordering of information within a paragraph, and how to generate a concept based on two different examples from a text. 

The task:

1. Students are given this worksheet.
2. Students pick two pieces of evidence from the worksheet that they think are similar, or that they like the look of. Higher ability students can fill in details about the point being made by each piece of evidence.
3. Students think of something they could say that brings these two pieces of evidence together. What common idea is within them? How are they similar? What argument do they both support? This is then written onto the top of the sheet.
4. Students then write a paragraph that starts with the concept statement they have created and copy the two examples in after it. This is done under timed conditions (9 or 10 minutes for Year 9, 8 minutes for Year 10).

There are three things to watch for when students construct the paragraph. These are things we may take for granted, or things that have not been explicitly taught to students before.

• Make sure the students are putting their sentences one after the other in the paragraph. Some students will start a new line for every sentence which makes the paragraph look like three small separate paragraphs. It can mean a couple of things when students do this, the most worrying of which is that they may not think of all these separate sentences as being part of something cohesive that belongs together. Some students won't learn this through being told ahead of the task, they will need to physically write it wrong first and then have the teacher correct it in front of them in person. 
• The two examples will need some adjusted wording or a connective clause of some sort between them. EG. Additionally, In addition to this, A further example of this is, Moreover, etc. Not all students will instinctively know this, especially if they haven't done a lot of (or any) academic reading. 
• For students who have no trouble assembling the paragraph quickly and understanding all of the above, this could be the time where you introduce the idea of a linking sentence at the bottom that consolidates the concept of the overall paragraph and ties things back to a bigger idea (the thesis). Stronger English students will be able to do this quite well in Stage 5.  

Happy paragraphing!

Disclaimer: The above resource was created specifically for this blog in my own spare time. 

Documentary Techniques in Blackfish

Not a long blog today, just thought I'd share a resource that relates specifically to the film Blackfish and more generally to studying documentaries. It's something I would use with Stage 5 (Year 9 or 10)... I created it a couple of years ago and meant to put it on the blog but forgot in the chaos of 2020's pandemic. 

Anyway, it's a glossary activity that serves a dual purpose:

• It lets students express their understanding and/or learn about a range of techniques used in the construction of documentaries (you'll note the inclusion of anthropomorphism - this is because it's particular to Blackfish).
• The teacher can use this as an opportunity to gauge student understanding of a range of techniques that they may or may not have learned prior to this study. As teachers we often find ourselves teaching students that we might not have taught in previous years - these students no doubt have already been taught a range of techniques relevant to the study of English, but no two English teachers cover the exact same things so it's always useful to check-in and see what the students know.

Anyway, it's not a complex activity. Students are shown a range of definitions and must then match them to the technique names. 

1. Give students this worksheet. 
2. The teacher walks the students through this PowerPoint so they can see a range of definitions. Students are to write the definitions in on the worksheet where they think they fit.  
3. Students can then either A) Numerically order the techniques in order of familiarity, or B) Give each one a score out of 3 in terms of how familiar they are with them. 

The last step is important to teachers as it provides an opportunity for Assessment for Learning, and can help identify areas that will need introduction or reinforcement with the class. 

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

Mise En Scene - The Sapphires

When teaching film there are a range of things that are considered essential in terms of metalanguage and key skills and understandings. The base understandings seem to be:

• Camera Angles
• Shot Sizes

And that's where it ends in terms of consistency. Each teacher, faculty, school tends to deviate from this point with their own idea of how and what should be taught in relation to film. You get things like the following, but it's by no means a prescriptive or universal list:

• Costuming
• Set design
• Editing
• Camera Movement
• Lighting
• Sound Design

Anyway, I'm not seeking to codify Film Studies for NSW schools in this blog post, I just think it's interesting that the approach can vary so much. Another major element in addition to the above list is, of course, mise en scene, and this is something that many teachers do indeed touch upon when teaching film. 

Here's a breakdown of how we could approach mise en scene in the classroom:

Mise en Scene

This is a word used to describe what a director decides to put into a shot. It includes everything - where characters are placed in a scene, what objects feature, how much of the environment can be seen, etc.

Mise en scene can determine power relationships between characters. By placing a character in the centre of the foreground it suggests that they are confident and in power, that they are in charge of the scene, or are important. In contrast, by placing a character in the margins of a scene, or in the background, it suggests that they are not important or without power over their own situation.

Most directors place great importance on mise en scene as it is an essential part of a film's visual language.

(The above summary can be found here as a worksheet with a rudimentary graphic to demonstrate the components - Mise en Scene notes.)

Examples

After students are familiarised or refreshed with the above, you can then look at some examples from The Sapphires (I think this would be a useful film to use with Year 10 for a range of reasons). First, I would look at a modelled response to a screenshot, and then I would ask students to write their own analysis of other shots. Ideally, this would then be linked to some of the themes the class would have looked at in an overall unit on Aboriginal-focused texts (things like cultural identity, experiences of racism, kinship, new experiences, etc.) and used to construct analytical paragraphs. 

Here's the first screenshot I would look at:

Here's the modelled analysis, in which the goal is to get students thinking about the steps towards analysis as much as the analysis itself, as this is something that higher order thinkers can sometimes fail to articulate (IE. Show your working!):

Observations:

1. Gail is placed in background against curtain, a little to the left.
2. She is partially obscured by out of focus figures in the audience, and Cynthia is blocked out completely.
3. The camera has been placed in a way so that the white pub audience is between the viewer and the protagonist.

Analysis: This suggests that Gail is not in a position of power. The out of focus audience makes the shot feel uncomfortable and claustrophobic, and symbolises the restrictions put on Indigenous people trying to perform in this era. Gail is also placed towards the back and to the left, suggesting that she is not of important to this environment (a pub filled with white people).

Here's the screenshots students would then analyse independently:

Here's some notes I made for the above screenshots that could be used to support teachers and students after they'd finished with the analysis section:

Observations:

1. Julie, Kay and Gail are all placed to the right side of the shot, sharing equal space with the environment.
2. All three figures are placed in the back of the shot with the camera at a slight low angle.
3. Julie's shadow is cast to her left as a fourth figure.

Analysis: The slight low angle places the three characters into a position of power (albeit a small one), and the fact that they are standing up against the door represents that they are in the process of being kicked out of the pub. They have been deliberately placed into the boundary of the shot to symbolise their exclusion from the establishment. The shadow could represent the dark, ugly nature of the situation, or even foreshadows the fourth member of the group still yet to appear.

Observations:

1. Kay and Gail enter into a room, the backs of their heads are placed in the foreground of the shot in close-up.
2. The rest of the room is filled with bodies moving about - some in the background, and one on either side of the frame (both are only partially visible).
3. Not all of the environment can be clearly seen.

Analysis: The lack of a close-up on the girls' faces means that the viewer's attention is focused elsewhere, and the number of people all engaged in various activities means that the viewer's focus is split numerous ways - representing the excitement of the party. The partially obscured figures on either side of the frame create a cramped feeling, giving the impression that the party is full of people. 

Observations:

1. The band is placed in the background of the shot but are brightly lit and spread across the entire frame.
2. The backs of heads are seen in the bottom foreground of the shot, in silhouette/shadow.
3. There are no walls on either side of the frame.

Analysis: The crowd is placed low enough in the frame for the viewer to still focus on the band in the background, and the lighting helps direct the viewer's attention in this way as well. The lack of walls/barriers on either side of the frame makes the environment seem more open / pleasant. The heads in the foreground give the impression of a large, engaged audience (compare/contrast to the audience in the modelled shot at the start of this exercise).

Observations:

1. The car is placed in the centre and foreground of the shot.
2. The camera is at a slight high angle and far enough away from the car for the car to only take up the lower half of the frame, meaning the environment is easily seen.
3. The building can be seen on all sides of the car, people have been placed on either side, and the vegetation is almost symmetrical.

Analysis: The viewer is encouraged to put themselves in the place of the car. It's placement in the shot suggests for the viewer to take on the perspective of the girls as they enter the hotel for the first time. The arrangement of the building and vegetation on all sides (and above) the car makes the character seem small in comparison to the environment, suggesting feels of awe and luxury that may connect to the hotel's immense size.

Observations:

1. Gail and Dave are placed in the centre and foreground, so close to the camera that they are slightly out of focus.
2. The camera is at a slight low angle, looking upwards at Gail's parents from between Gail and Dave.
3. Gail's parents are placed almost in the centre of the background looking down towards Gail and Dave, and are in focus. Gail's dad leans up against the post on his verandah. 

Analysis: The audience is put in Gail and Dave's shoes as they face Gail's parents as a couple for the first time. Gail's parents are placed in a position of power, standing higher up in the frame and looking down on Gail and Dave, symbolising the discomfort of the situation and the upper hand they hold in deciding whether they'll accept Dave into their family or not. The verandah takes up the entire background, suggesting its importance in this scene, and Gail's dad leans against the post - which represents that he is connected to this environment, that this is his land and his place. The camera is also focused on Gail's parents because it is their reaction that the viewer is waiting for. 

Here's the above as a worksheet that could be used: Mise en Scene Analysis.

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