Author Mentors: Ellen Van Neerven and Theme

This is Part 3 in a series on 'Author Mentors'. In a nutshell, these lessons are about using short extracts to scaffold student engagement; a way of backward mapping from the NSW Year 12 Craft of Writing module and the Year 11 Reading to Write module before that. 

After looking at context and structure, today's sample lesson moves into more conceptual territory - what an English teacher might traditionally call 'theme'. You will need a copy of Ellen Van Neerven's Young Adult anthology Heat and Light for the extract that forms the crux of these activities.

1. Extract. Start by reading a selected extract from Heat and Light as a class. The extract in question is from the first page of the short story 'Hot Stones'. It starts with 'Thirteen is the age that makes you,' and ends with 'Go easy. I have to see if we're related, first.'

Students then do a think-pair-share activity, discussing each of the following questions before responding in their books:

1. Tell me what you liked best about this extract.
2. Tell me about the main character in the extract.
3. Tell me how you would feel if you had been kicked out of English.
4. Tell me about the Grandmother.
5. Tell me why the main character is so interested in Mia. 

These are fairly straightforward questions designed to gauge comprehension and provoke a personal response. Comprehension is a key part of thematic engagement because the skill of summarising is the very core of what a 'theme' or 'concept' is. If a student is able to summarise something, then they are identifying the most significant aspects of the text. There is some degree of subjectivity in this, which is what we (the teachers) want because identifying or responding to a theme in a text is a highly subjective process. The more that a student is able to take a firm and individual position, the more they will find success in crafting a thesis for an extended response. 

In some Gifted and Talented/High Potential and Gifted Education circles, summarising leads to the higher order skill of abstraction; the ability to think of things in terms of concepts rather than plot points. 

2. Connecting. Once students have begun grappling with the text at a surface comprehension level (and perhaps deeper), move on to looking at the connections that can be made with the text. Again, this should be a subjective experience for each student. It doesn't matter how an outsider may judge the 'quality' of the student's answers, what's important is said student's ability to create their own connections when reading. The process of generating ideas of how to connect the text to other things is an entire step on its own before we look at guiding students in calling upon more judicious examples. Some students may struggle to make what the teacher sees as an effective connection, but this is why we look at doing this in Stage 5 or earlier... it's part of that backward mapping process that fosters skills needed for Year 11 and 12.

Anyway, ask students to connect: 

1. To Self - What is something you have in common with or something that makes you different from Colin?
2. To Text - What is a similarity that this extract shares with another text?
3. To World - What is something from the wider world or history that you can relate to this extract?

3. Considering Theme. Now we're ready for the final part of the activity. After thinking about the text in a few different ways, students are then asked to reflect and develop on their ideas. This starts with a prompt to concentrate the extract into a single-word abstraction. Students are then asked to develop this into a statement of theme, which is essentially a scaffolded way of getting students to develop a mini-thesis, or a conceptual understanding of the extract. Concept, idea, abstraction, or theme - it doesn't matter what you call it, it all supports the process of writing an essay.

1. If you had to summarise this extract as being about something in a single word, what would it be?
2. What opinion do you think the author might have about the single word you just wrote?
3. What do you think the extract is saying about this word?
4. You've now developed a thematic understanding of the extract. Find three quotes that support this theme.
5. Explain exactly how each quote supports your thematic understanding.

It is entirely possible to take this further by delving into structural territory and looking at techniques used, etc., but I would personally keep the focus tightly on theme. This reinforces the cognitive purity of the lesson in teaching one key thing. 

The above lesson can be found as a PowerPoint here. 

Acknowledgment: 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.

Modelling Essay Writing

Earlier this year I had the pleasure to write a student resource textbook on The Merchant of Venice for the HSC 'Texts and Human Experiences' Common Module. I wrote this at the invitation of Into English (the book can be found here [digital e-book] and here [print edition]). It was something I did separately to my teaching as I actually taught my 2019 Year 12 class Nineteen Eighty-Four for the Common Module, and this means that I haven't had much of a chance to reflect on the module from a Merchant of Venice standpoint. Anyway, long story short, I've received some questions over the last few months about essay writing for The Merchant of Venice and this prompted me to write a sample paragraph. 

This paragraph can be viewed as supplementary material in support of one of the sample questions in the Into English book. The question itself isn't too important as the piece is predominantly designed to just demonstrate the components of a paragraph addressing human experiences, and can hopefully be used as a model for students to look at.

Here's the paragraph in question:

Sample Paragraph

The Merchant of Venice, through its exploration of the way in which people respond to appearances, reveals particular inconsistencies inherent in the human condition. This is perhaps best exemplified by the Prince of Morocco's observation that "All that glisters is not gold", an aphorism in which the deceptiveness of appearances is rendered concisely on multiple levels. Primarily, this remark is made in response to the false selection of a gold casket in the test for Portia's hand in marriage. It also doubles, however, as a metaphor for one of the play's key themes, wherein society often projects a shiny veneer that covers uglier truths. The antipathy that exists between Antonio and Shylock similarly conveys this context, with Antonio using the simile "like a villain with a smiling cheek" to describe Shylock's offer to loan him money, highlighting the apparent act of kindness as being inherently deceptive and evil. The inability of Christians and Jews within Renaissance-era Europe to see each other's true nature is further reinforced by Shylock's rhetorical identification of Antonio's hypocrisy, exemplified by the line "You called me 'dog' - and for these courtesies I'll lend you thus much money?" From a 21st century context, the audience is positioned to give equal weight to both the Christian and Jewish standpoint, and Shakespeare's depth of understanding becomes clearer from this more enlightened vantage point. In his examination of deceptive appearances, Shakespeare utilises these discussions to bring to the surface a range of inconsistencies in human behaviours and attitudes in order to demonstrate how conflict originates in such duplicity.

Annotated Paragraph

To assist with breaking up the above paragraph into its constituent parts, I have also attached an annotated version below.

Here it is: The Merchant of Venice and Human Experiences

I wanted to put the annotations up here directly but I couldn't figure out how to do it within a blog. I mean, to be honest, it's the end of the year and I'm feeling pretty exhausted so I didn't really invest too much time in trying to figure out how to convey annotations in the blogging format. 

Okay, look, if I'm really honest I didn't invest any time in figuring out how to convey annotations here. It's been a long year.

I would like to add that I wish you all the best over the upcoming holiday break!

A Monster Calls - Book Annotating

I got around purchasing an entire class' worth of little post-its (which can get expensive) by just cutting up the bigger post-its.

Mid-way through last year I attended the AATE/ALEA National English Conference in Hobart and was particularly taken with American educator Cris Tovani's work on getting students to engage with active-reading. In particular, Tovani spoke about bringing the focus back on reading during a class novel study through the use of independent annotating. She termed these as 'V.I.P.s' aka 'Very Important Points'.

In this lecture, Tovani explained that the students are given a range of coloured post-it notes, with each colour corresponding with a kind of annotation, and the examples she gave from her own teaching demonstrated a wonderful array of student-led discussion points. Inspired by this, I decided to give it a go with a novel study in one of my own classes.

The book in question was A Monster Calls, which I matched up with my mixed ability Year 10 class. Instead of leaving the annotating as homework I decided to eschew the use of comprehension questions in favour of dedicating more time to reading in class, and then letting the students annotate after each chapter was completed with the use of a pre-provided schema to guide them.

Cris Tovani, pedagogue extraordinaire

On this schema I outlined 6 different categories to correspond with the 6 different coloured post-it notes supplied. These were:

• Connect: Note when something from the book reminds you of something from your life, or something you have seen/read, or connects to a prediction you have made about the novel. 
• Question: Write down questions you have about the novel as you think them up while you read.
• Infer/Predict: Flag bits where you have used examples from the text to figure out something in relation to the novel, or have made a new prediction.
• Conflict: Note parts of the text where conflict occurs (this particular novel study was part of a larger unit on texts that deal with conflict)
• Monitor: Highlight parts that didn't make sense to you at first, or at all, or words that were unfamiliar to you.
• Evaluate: This can be your opinion about things happening in the story, things you like/dislike, or just general thoughts. 

The schema can be downloaded here.

A sample from class.

I was surprised (and happy) at how enthusiastically a lot of students got into this. One student seemed to take it as a challenge to see how many flags he could put into each chapter. The upshot of this, besides increased engagement with the text, is that the students were able to use their own annotations to call upon examples to use in their own independent analysis of the novel later on. 

While we're talking about novel study, here are three simple and relevant pointers I've picked up over the last 8 years in regards to teaching novels with mixed ability junior classes:

• Keep the novels in the classroom. If the students take them home then you might not see them all again, and it becomes difficult for these students to stay on-task in lessons that require them to have the books in front of them if they've forgotten to bring them.
• For mixed ability classes, read the entire text aloud while the students read along. This will ensure that you can stick to some kind of schedule/timeframe... a novel study can become messy if students are left to read on their own; some will finish the book in the first few days, others will never get past the first few pages. I know there are very strong arguments against this practice, however I was wholly converted last year by Steven Layne's fantastic lecture on reading aloud, which turned out to be perfect for my own Western Sydney context. 
• Pick a novel of shorter length. The reading ages of junior students vary more the closer they get to senior school, you could have some students who would read a 900 page Game of Thrones novel and others who would need help focusing on finishing one of Roald Dahl's wonderful children's novels. You typically only have 50-70% of a term to get through a novel and the lower ability students will lose focus if they are asked to sustain engagement with an adult-length novel. By all means, extend the more literate students with extra texts that they can read on their own - chances are that they already have a love of reading if they are this literate - but it's also important not to leave the rest of the class behind and to give them every chance of appreciating what reading can offer.
  

There will be detractors in regards to the above, but keep in mind that there are also students who often get to Year 11 and are able to say, "I've never read a single book, not even in previous years of English when the rest of the class read the class novel". By reading aloud during class time, and ensuring that it's a novel that the whole class can get through, the aforementioned disengaged students will get to Year 11 and be able to say, "Actually, I read an entire book, along with the rest of the class".   

On a final note, I also highly recommend A Monster Calls because it's a poignant, highly engaging read that will prompt discussion and stay with the reader long after it's finished.

Characters of 1984

I haven't posted anything this month yet. The main reason for this is, well... there are actually lots of reasons for it, but they're mostly boring and you wouldn't care about them, O intrepid internet reader!

Anyway, here's a worksheet on the characters of 1984 - Character Analysis.

In said sheet, students explore the three main characters (Winston Smith, Julia, O'Brien) and find a corresponding quote from the text before answering a guided question for each one. The sheet also has summaries for the following supporting characters:

• Big Brother
• Mr Charrington
• Syme
• Parsons
• Emmanuel Goldstein

After students have been taken through each of the characters, get them to synthesise their thoughts on the supporting characters in response to one of the primary themes of the novel. This can be done through this question:

George Orwell's 1984 is primarily about the effect of totalitarianism on a society. Pick two supporting characters and discuss how they demonstrate this.

On a separate but related note, I recently had the pleasure of attending the recent stage production of 1984 created by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan. This took place at the Sydney Theatre, and the visit became possible thanks to my colleague Ashlee Horton, who organised it as a school excursion for some of our Year 12 Advanced English students.

The play starts in a somewhat disorientating manner, perhaps relying a little too much on the viewer's knowledge of the novel as various elements and characters coalesce together in a metatextual opening scene that meditates on the themes as much as the plot. From here though the production took hold of just about everyone in the audience with its arresting and inventive use of lighting and sound. Without getting too much into particulars, the experience is a wholly visceral assault on the senses that immerses the viewer in Orwell's world of surveillance and control, with the play building its own way into the story; both paying tribute to the novel whilst also making the best use of the medium of the stage.

I was left breathless by the end. It was also great to hear the students similarly inflamed and provoked by the play.

Macbeth and Grammar Analysis

The lightbulb moment.

It's that point where you see a student's facial expression shift as the meaning of what you're saying dawns on them. You don't always see it in every lesson, or even in every week, but when you do see it - you know it. I haven't seen half as many lightbulb moments in all my other lessons combined as I have when explicitly teaching grammar skills.   

These skills include, but aren't limited to:

• Lexical Chains (also known as 'text chains')
• Simple, Compound, and Complex Sentences
• Embedded Clauses
• Adjectival Clauses
• Ellipsis
• Lexical Density and Grammatical Intricacy 

I recently spent a lesson with my Year 10 class honing in on text chains. This was done in conjunction with teaching Shakespeare's Macbeth. The first thing I did was get the students to copy this short piece of text on some of the play's themes.

The copying is the easy part, and you can even skip this step by just handing them the text on a piece of paper. The next bit is the interesting part where they have to start engaging with some text analysis. This is done through the identification and highlighting of 'lexical chains' (also known as 'text chains'):

1. Model an example first. Highlight the name of the play, 'Macbeth', in one colour and then highlight three other words or word-groups that mean the same thing, drawing arrows to show the 'chain' that runs through the text. (The other three examples are 'the play', 'this text', and 'piece of theatre').
2. Once students have seen one of these chains, ask them to identify some of their own. Examples could include: 'Shakespeare' and associated terms, 'themes' and associated terms, and 'Macbeth' (the character) and associated terms.

The purpose of this activity is to show students the way synonyms can be used to increase the cohesion of a text. 'Cohesion' refers to the way a text hangs together, and text chains are one of several ways that increased sophistication can be achieved in writing. 

Here are the completed examples:

The point here is that students begin to get a better sense of why it's important to utilise a wider vocabulary, and they can also now see explicit lines of meaning that tie the text together. The longer a particular text chain the more the piece can be said to maintain this specific theme throughout the paragraph or essay.

Another byproduct of this process is that it assists students in decoding unfamiliar terms. The lexical chains encourage the reader to 'read' the text in a different way, building up their understanding, and gathering further literacy tools with which they can attack increasingly sophisticated pieces of writing. For those of you out there who are keen on Super Six comprehension, this comes under monitoring.

Coming to grips with text chains is the point where students have that aforementioned 'lightbulb' moment, and it primes them for further analysis of the text in other ways. It's empowering for students to now see at least one clear way that they can determine the quality of a piece of a text. I point out here that it isn't by any means the only indicator of quality, however, it is nonetheless a way in which students can assess both their own writing and the writing of others. Having gained a better understanding of how an extensive vocabulary can improve writing, students now also seem much more willing to try a few other new things. They've essentially been scaffolded to a point where they can begin an even closer reading of the text.

Here's how we can build further. Ask students to do the following:

The first question is asking students to actively decode new words by using what they've already learned. I nudge them along at this point but it's important to let them have a few educated guesses first, and for them to share their answers with one another. 

The second question is a way to make students consider the usefulness of adjectives in building deeper shades of meaning. Take an example, such as 'underlying concepts', and demonstrate the way in which 'underlying' can be removed without changing the essential meaning of the sentence. Then ask students to consider what the adjective 'underlying' adds to the word 'concepts'. This demonstrates the overall point of the adjective as a grammatical function that describes an attribute of the noun it precedes.

The third question deals with the cohesive device known as 'ellipsis'. In this context, an ellipsis is any word that is implied but not stated. The phrase 'Chief amongst these are' omits the word 'themes' between 'these' and 'are' due to the fact that the term 'themes' has already been made clear in the prior sentence. Gaining an understanding of ellipsis is dependent on context; students need to read the preceding and proceeding sentences to achieve greater awareness of the word that is subject to omission. Ellipsis exists (much like synonym use to build text chains) as another way for writers to avoid unnecessary repetition. Getting students to become consciously aware of this allows for further empowerment in their own writing.

Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet: 9 Things That Stand Out

To date, Kenneth Branagh has appeared in 6 Shakespeare films (5 of which he also directed)

In what way could a director bring the themes of Hamlet into focus? As, quite possibly, the most revered and famous piece of fiction of all time, Shakespeare's play has gathered an unrivalled abundance of literary criticism. A Shakespeare enthusiast like Kenneth Branagh therefore has a vast depository of readings, identified themes, and critical appraisals to draw upon when crafting the definitive film version of the text. 

Filmed in 1996, Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet was the first (and so far only) unabridged film version of the play. As a 4+ hour piece of cinema about a play where the protagonist essentially spends the majority of the time wrestling with the idea of doing something or not doing something, Branagh's film was always going to be a hard sell in terms of finding financing. When the American production company Castle Rock Entertainment came to Branagh's rescue, it was on the proviso that he utilise as many 'big name' actors as possible.

So we get a range of surprising cameos throughout:

• Two-time Academy Award winner and Hollywood legend Jack Lemmon as the watchman Marcellus. Lemmon manages to turn a relatively small role into a figure of depth and weight; a wise and half-broken old man of the night's watch.
• France's biggest actor, Gerard Depardieu, as the one-scene wonder Reynaldo.
• Billy Crystal as the more talkative of the two Gravediggers (and he does a great job with the role too).
• Academy Award-winning screen legend Charlton Heston as the Player King.
• Oscar-winning British acting royalty John Gielgud, John Mills, and Judi Dench as characters who are only mentioned in passing in the actual play (Gielgud and Dench appear as historical figures from the story of Troy, who are referenced in the Player King's speech, whereas Mills appears a couple of times as 'Old Norway', the ailing leader of Denmark's neighbouring kingdom).
• The roaring and relentlessly beardy character-actor Brian Blessed as the Ghost / King Hamlet.
• Richard Attenborough (students may recognise him from the Jurassic Park films) as the English ambassador who appears at the end of the play.
• Renowned British comedian and 'music hall entertainer' Ken Dodd as Hamlet's childhood friend, Yorick. Dodd's lively and wordless cameo takes place in flashback as Hamlet stares into the jester's skull, and it's (in my opinion) one of the most surprisingly moving moments in the film. 
• Robin Williams as the pompous courtier Osric. Williams takes a role that could be interpreted as smarmy, or arrogant, and manages to make the character amusingly hapless and somewhat sympathetic. 

All these well-known actors mean that the film actually holds the record for the most Oscar-winning performers on the screen in a single film. A nice bit of trivia for you!

Hamlet peers into his past.

Branagh's extensive use of flashbacks to characters like 'Old Norway', Yorick, and the historical figures in the Player King's speech, helps to open the play up into something more cinematic and non-linear. Despite the film's daunting length, Hamlet (1996) presents the text in the most accessible way possible, with Branagh consistently finding inventive ways to add movement and simplicity to the narrative.

Take, for instance, the climactic showdown in Elsinore's court. Everything is turned up to 11 - Claudius is impaled by a flying sword, Laertes falls from a balcony in his death scene, and even Osric is killed! Branagh also liberally interprets Fortinbras's arrival as a violent political coup, with the Norwegian troops storming the castle during Hamlet's fatal duel. There's also the hilarious and bizarre arrival of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern earlier on in the film, with the interchangeable pair riding in with much self-made fanfare on a little tooting steam train!

Hamlet the Film - and - Themes / Concepts

Where should I begin? Watching Branagh's film translation of the text helped to nail a lot of ideas down for both myself and my students. Here are some things that became apparent for me while I watched the movie - some are particular to the film, and some are just general observations about the way the play represents Shakespeare's ideas and context:

• Antithesis Visualised: Shakespeare was a big fan of placing antonyms up against each other in his dialogue. Part of the reason for this is that it helps give the actors direction in how they perform a line. For example, when said as a single line without thought, "To be or not to be" is simply six words, however, when said with emphasis on the opposing ideas, the line becomes much more significant. Branagh takes the Shakespearean motif of antithesis and renders it with clarity on the big screen through his introduction of Hamlet in Act 1, Scene 2, as a dour black-clad brooder juxtaposed against the bright and dazzling cheer of the Danish court; a resplendent hall of polished surfaces where white rose petals rain down in celebration of the coronation and marriage of King Claudius.  

An incredibly visual translation of the text's themes.

• The Private vs. Public: In Act 1, Scene 3, Ophelia tells her father about Hamlet's attempts to woo her. Branagh's Hamlet has Polonius cautiously close some impressive wrought-iron gates behind his son's exit so that he can establish privacy before broaching Ophelia's relationship with Hamlet. This simple piece of direction, completely unmentioned in the play's dialogue, highlights the political delicacy of Hamlet's affections for Ophelia. In other words, Polonius knows that Hamlet's status as Prince means that he will be unable to ever establish a formal and public relationship with Ophelia, and hence he does not want anyone to bear witness to the dimensions of any conversation along these lines. It's telling that Polonius is so paranoid and distrustful right from the get-go, especially in light of his own tendency towards spying throughout the remainder of the film/play. 

• Madness and Appearances: The introduction of 'mad' Hamlet in Act 2 sees Kenneth Branagh appear wearing a skull mask - an obvious but nonetheless neat piece of foreshadowing that emphasises the play's theme of mortality. The removal of the mask to reveal Hamlet's unhinged eyes also calls into question the layers of appearance that the play asks the viewer to buy into. Is Hamlet play-acting? Or is he genuinely distressed? The wearing of the mask suggests the former, but the eyes hint at the latter. Later, when Hamlet says, "Now I am alone", Branagh plays it as a cathartic release - suggesting that the pretense of madness is physically and emotionally exhausting; perhaps leading to madness in itself.

• The Great Chain of Being: This quote, paraphrased, "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty... in action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! ...the paragon of animals", perfectly demonstrates the play's concern for the Elizabethan idea of the Great Chain of Being. In context, this was a way of seeing the universe - a hierarchy that established man's place in relation to the natural and metaphysical worlds. In the aforementioned quote, Hamlet is pondering the contradictions of a man; set on the Earth amongst the animals yet also capable of godlike and angelic behaviour. All of a person's actions fall on a scale between the beastly and the divine, and it's this way of understanding humanity that drives much of Hamlet's plot. Think of Claudius's confession scene - he veers from one end of the spectrum to the other in his acknowledgement of guilt, sin, and criminal reward. Hamlet also wrestles with his place in the Great Chain, albeit implicitly, in the way he considers how revenge and thoughts of suicide fit with one's ascent to Heaven.

• Historical Allusion: Branagh manages to keep all of the Player King's speech (heck, the film is unabridged - meaning that everything is kept!) whilst simultaneously making this difficult section of the play more relevant. The Player King makes reference to the story of the Greek General Pyrrhus and the Trojan Horse, which Branagh boldly puts up on the screen as a means of highlighting one of Hamlet's key themes - the role of subterfuge in the Danish court and the hiding of intentions; elements in Shakespeare's play that were no doubt designed to hit home with Elizabethan audiences who were becoming increasingly acclimatised to the Machiavellian intrigues of the Queen's court.  The Elizabethans were also quite taken with Ancient Greek and Roman culture, which meant that this textual allusion would be a familiar allegory for audiences to identify with.

Osric is basically Polonius Mk II - another focal point for Hamlet's scorn.

• Hamlet and Polonius: Prior to the performance of 'The Mouse Trap', the Prince of Denmark publicly mocks Polonius on the stage in front of all his peers. Branagh uses this moment to illustrate the depth of antagonism that Hamlet holds for Polonius; note the way he delivers the line, "He's for a jig, or a bawdry - or so he sleeps". This disparagingly suggests that Polonius can only appreciate texts of low culture and that he is too stupid to appreciate great works of literature and theatre. This exchange also demonstrates that, even when acting 'mad', Hamlet still cannot resist displaying his sharp wit.

• Set Design: There's a lot of scope for discussing the relevance of Branagh's choice of sets for this film. The interior shots for the main court of Elsinore take place on a huge and extravagant set, complete with ornate throne and mirrored walls. The use of reflective surfaces almost becomes an extra character in the film, forcing the protagonist to literally face himself as he delivers his most famous self-examining soliloquy. Behind these mirrored walls are also hidden rooms from which Claudius and Polonius can spy; symbolically reinforcing the theme of intentions concealed by a glossy facade.

• Ophelia, Misogyny, and Appearance vs. Reality: To quote Hamlet as he berates Ophelia, "God gives you one face and you paint yourself another". On a surface level this line of dialogue fits into Shakespeare's discourse on appearances and reality - the idea that each of these characters are publicly portraying themselves in a way that dramatically contrasts with their private, inner selves. But if we look at this line a little deeper we can see that Hamlet is speaking syllogistically. Syllogism is a rhetorical technique in which the speaker draws a specific conclusion by using a general example; in this case Hamlet is speaking both about all women and Ophelia. The result is something quite misogynistic, with the implication being that Ophelia (and women in general) are inherently deceptive - with Hamlet interpreting their use of make-up as being symbolically dishonest.   

• Claudius: Derek Jacobi is fantastic as Claudius; note that moment of realisation when he is confronted by Hamlet's re-enactment of the old King's murder - Jacobi speaks the line, "Give me some light. Away" in a cold and slow manner, rather than in the expected state of panic. The effect is apt, indicating the new king's propensity for careful and cautious calculation. This is a fury that Claudius holds deep inside, and a feeling that he must nurse to the surface so that he can remain, as ever, in control. I also appreciated the fact that Branagh seems to always have Claudius sipping alcohol, which comes across as the Victorian equivalent of a fat cigar between the teeth - a corrupt figure enjoying the spoils of his power.  

What a great play.

What a great film!

Teaching Theme with Year 9

My Harvest Home by John Glover

Imagine this. It's Week 1 of Term 1, and I have a class of 25-odd Year 9 students, fresh from their triumphant journey through Year 8, ready to face a new year with a new English teacher.

I stand at the front of the room. The first topic for the year is Poetry.

Crickets chirp.

Poetry can sometimes be a bit of a hard sell when it comes to teaching 14 year-olds. And these are students I've never taught before; it's Day One, Topic One. I don't know any of these kids yet. 

The weeks start rolling by. I've decided to focus on the Indigenous perspective of Australia as seen through the lens of poetry, drawing on ideas from this text:

The students respond well to it. We learn about some techniques, how to annotate a poem, and what context is: the time, the place, the reasons a poet might write a certain poem. But a bubbling and largely unacknowledged bassline rumbles under it all: theme. So I ask, What ideas are being communicated? 

My students look at me blankly.

High school English is a curious beast for students to come to grip with. Many come along in Year 7 quite well-equipped with knowledge of grammar, sentence construction, techniques... but one thing tends to remain elusive; what is a 'theme'? Even by Year 9 a lot of students are still trying to get their heads around it.

A theme is an idea, or a concept. The terminology here, like a lot of things in teaching, can be tricky because these words are used in different ways in different contexts. 'Concept' is now being used with a very specific purpose in the English Textual Concepts framework, so it's probably best to steer clear of this term. I actually also prefer to avoid the term 'theme' because 'theme' can have specific connotations relating to grammar and music, but it's a term that's quite difficult to get away from in English due to its ubiquity. 

So I try to stick to 'idea' for the most part, though I am guilty of reverting back to theme with grades 7-9. The materials here refer to 'theme'. 

Back to the point of this blog: my Head Teacher has been liaising with Wayne Sawyer from Western Sydney University over the last 8 months as part of a research project concerning mini-lessons (a teaching phenomenon pioneered by Nancie Atwell in the U.S.), so I've taken this approach to teach theme. 

The PowerPoint presentation is just two slides. The first slide explains what a theme is, and students can make a few notes about it if you like. Then the next slide is a 1835 painting by John Glover called My Harvest Home. 

The point of using a painting in a poetry unit is to drive home the transcendent nature of a theme. I want the students to make connections between different kinds of texts with the theme as the common factor. By examining different mediums that explore the same idea, students should hopefully be able to identify this one common factor that stands out. My Harvest Home is a colonial Australian painting that taps into the pastoral myth that formed the basis of late 19th century Australian identity. Students don't need to know this, but the vision of European settlers farming in the sunshine provides a provocative counterpoint to the version of Australian history that's seen in most Aboriginal poetry. 

The second slide features a collection of questions designed to provoke student thought about the ideas that fuel this artwork. It can be discussed as a class, and then the teacher can use this discussion to come up with a class response (that's what the white rectangle is for on the slide - it's a space for a class definition).

Theme and context are tied very closely together, and I found it useful to bring things back to the over-arching ideas of the unit with a series of questions that reinforced prior knowledge about context and perspective. 

1. What kind of person do you think John Glover was? What can you guess about his context from this painting?
2. 1835 Australia... Whose point of view is missing from this text?
3. Why do you think that is?
4. Do you think this painting is a realistic depiction of 1835?
5. If this painting were a poem, what kind of words would be used? Make a list of 15 adjectives, verbs and nouns that could be used. 
6. Write that poem!

Resource:
1. PowerPoint presentation on 'Theme'