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. 

The Use of Rhetoric in Documentaries

The explicit teaching of rhetoric can provide a useful framework through which students can better understand persuasive texts. In the case of documentaries, narratives are constructed with the express purpose of manipulating an audience. It is via the major modes of persuasion that this is best facilitated, often referred to as the 'rhetorical triangle'. The use of the rhetorical triangle is perhaps relevant in some way for all texts but, in the case of the documentary, it is hardwired into the very fibre of the genre. 

Your mileage will vary in terms of which cornerstones of rhetoric you want to touch on. The most popular approach is to teach the aforementioned rhetorical triangle - Ethos, Logos, Pathos - but this isn't necessarily where things need to end. If we think of communication as a rhetorical process, you can quite easily stretch this to six cornerstones - making space for Kairos, Telos, and Topos (a rhetorical hexagon, I guess) 

This will require the teacher to have an awareness of their class and which persuasive element might be a Greek word too far. At the moment with Stage 5 I tend to stop at four (Ethos, Logos, Pathos, Kairos) but will always re-assess depending on the cohort being taught and how enthusiastic they are about rhetoric. I'm unlikely to ever teach all six, I think.

Some useful definitions:

• Ethos - Appealing to an audience through the use of authority, ethics, and credibility.
• Logos - Appealing to an audience through the use of logic, evidence, and factual-sounding claims.
• Pathos - Appealing to an audience through the use of emotion, particularly through triggering an emotional response.
  
• Kairos - Appealing to an audience by picking the best time and place to make an argument.

Today's activity is designed for use with the documentary Blackfish. 

1. I would project this document onto a board for students to see. 
2. Students draw up a table and sort the examples into whether they work as examples of Ethos, Logos, Pathos, or Kairos. 
3. Come together as a class to discuss which rhetorical cornerstones students matched each of the examples to.
4. Students can then be given a paragraph prompt - Account for Blackfish's ability to challenge the beliefs of audiences. This question essentially requires students to discuss the way in which rhetoric has been used to convince or persuade the audience, I would give a Year 9 or Year 10 class eight to ten minutes to complete the paragraph - this time limit will keep them focussed, and also works as the average amount of time it should take students to write ONE essay body paragraph in timed conditions. 

(The answers for the sheet are, with the key reasons underlined...)

Ethos

• An official from the Occupation Safety and Health Administration provides opinions that contradict SeaWorld's official lines regarding the lifespan of Orcas.
• A police report is included near the beginning of the documentary.
• A whale expert explains that Orcas have never harmed any humans in the wild.
• Many official news reports are shown in regard to some of the events that happened at SeaWorld.

Kairos

• Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite filmed and released Blackfish just 2-3 years after Orca trainer Dawn Brancheau was kileld.
• First screened at a variety of American Film Festival ahead of the international 'award-giving' season.

Logos

• Computer simulation is used to recreate the strategies used to hunt and capture Orcas. 
• An incredibly lengthy autopsy report is shown, including factual explanations of many specific details of Dawn's death.
• A graphic of Tilikum's family tree demonstrates how Tilikum is responsible for the breeding of 54% of the SeaWorld franchise's Orcas.

Pathos

• Quote about Orcas, "When you look into their eyes you know somebody is home."
• Dramatic, sad-sounding music in a 'minor key' is often played at key moments.
• Whale Hunter remorsefully describes what he did as being "like kidnapping a little kid away away from their mother."
• Details of death by Orca are explained in graphic and gruesome detail.
• The former trainers talk about crying upon seeing Orcas in the wild for the first time.
• Trainer, talking about an Orca being separated from its child, "That is heartbreaking. How can anyone look at that and think is is morally acceptable? It is not. That is not okay."

Disclaimer: The above resource was created 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. 

Film History: Early Editing #1

One thing I that find endlessly fascinating is the development of film as its own specific art form. The earliest experiments in film go back way further than we might initially imagine; if we consider the invention of moving imagery as the first step in the direction of cinema then film history has its roots in a piece of 5200 year old pottery recovered from an archaeological site in Iran called Shahr-i Sukhteh.

When spun, the patterns on the outside of the pottery create the short animation above. But how did humans first come up with the idea of combining images to create movement? The answer to this perhaps goes back even further...

It's been theorised that some of the early European cave paintings, such as the Trois Freres paintings (which are estimated to be somewhere between 14 000 and 40 000 years old) may have been deliberately transformed into animations when they were lit by flickering fire. For a demonstration on this, see the video above.

Eventually, of course, the combination of this long-held knowledge with the 19th century invention of photography led to cinema itself - see here for a lesson based on the very first 'proper' films from 1875.

Experiments in Editing: Life of an American Fireman

We take a lot in filmmaking for granted now but there are certain editing techniques that didn't come naturally to the first directors and editors. It was their innovations in the earliest days of silent cinema that created the film grammar we now rely on to create narratives on the screen. 

Below is Life of an American Fireman, a six minute film directed by pioneering American director Edward S. Porter in 1903. 

In the film, a group of firemen respond to a call and rescue a family from the second floor of their burning house. Porter wanted to depict the action from multiple perspectives, showing the helpless family inside the house as they were rescued by the firemen and the firemen as they climbed up the ladder outside and brought the family down to safety. 

Today a director would show these multiple perspectives by cross-cutting back and forth several times. Porter, however, lacked access to this technique as it hadn't been invented yet. Often referred to as 'parallel editing', the idea of portraying concurrent sequences at the same time by cutting between them did not really solidify on film until 6 years later with D.W. Griffith's A Corner in Wheat. 

Porter attempted to solve the issue in Life of an American Fireman by first showing the events within the house and then replaying the events afterwards from the outside.

It isn't the best way to show things happening at the same time. A modern audience finds it jarring to see events repeated in this way, and so it doesn't really work for us when creating a narrative. We can, however, see Porter attempting in his film to grapple with the concept of parallel editing. Even though he would not be the one to invent the technique of cross-cutting, Porter at least realised that - unlike the theatre - the medium of film had the potential to show events in multiple locations and to suggest that they were happening at the same time.

Film critic Mark Cousins calls this concept the 'meanwhile' of film grammar; we see something happening meanwhile something is also happening somewhere else. It was a radical jump in the crafting of film narratives as previously films had been content to portray events in a strictly linear fashion. This was the 'and then' of film grammar - it meant we would see one scene cutting to another to suggest that something happened and then something else happened next.

Students: Purpose and Methods

Getting students to understand film grammar is an intrinsic part of learning how to craft a film narrative. And understanding the history of this helps to highlight why taken-for-granted techniques such as cross-cutting are so important. One effective way of exploring film grammar with students is to have them film a relatively simple series of events (silent is better... introducing dialogue just makes things too complicated at this point). Students then edit their raw footage in multiple ways to show their understanding of cross-cutting and the differences between 'meanwhile' and 'and then'. By reflecting on this afterwards, students are able to develop their ability to articulate some of the terminology and reasoning behind editing and narrative-writing in general. 

It's beneficial for students to learn this for a range of reasons, and not just for the sake of developing their understanding of film or visual literacy. In terms of writing, the formulation of a narrative in this medium forces a degree of reflection that helps develop imagination and critical thinking. 

For More on Film Grammar

See also: The 180 Degree Rule.

See also: The Close-Up.

See also: Teaching Film as Language.

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.

A Path of Light and Joy

Even back in the mid-90s, when I was a bristling tadpole in a high school pond, I remember a class discussion that started quiet and then rose to a challenging crescendo. We were reading Came Back to Show You I Could Fly by Robin Klein, a YA novel about an unlikely friendship between an 11 year-old boy and a young drug-addicted pregnant woman. A girl in class took umbrage with the depressing nature of the story and asked the teacher, "Why do we have to do all these books about sad and depressing things?"

Several other students in the class, especially those who typically avoided reading at every opportunity, also piped up at this point, "Yeah, all these books have people die in them!"

As a class, we began to list each of the books we had read (this was the '90s, when English classes read anywhere between 4 to 8 books a year, rather than the more customary 1 that classes now cover just once each year). It transpired that, yes, every single book we had read involved a character dying or something else similarly tragic happening, like child abuse (So Much to Tell You, Goodnight Mr. Tom) or drug addiction (the aforementioned Came Back to Show You I Could Fly). 

A recent online discussion led by the always-insightful Clairie Ormiston on the NSW English Teachers Resourcing Sharing Facebook group posed a question that opened up a similar discussion - why are so many of the Prescribed Texts for Year 12 English in NSW focused on issues that could be quite triggering for people? Another valued colleague, Paula Madigan, asked what would work as more uplifting or joyous options for HSC study.

There are obviously lots of great unexplored options out there that would fit this brief, however, the process that leads to selection of Prescribed HSC texts for future syllabuses is well beyond this discussion. 

Instead, I've looked closely at the current NSW Prescriptions to ascertain the options that would work best for students and teachers seeking to avoid dark or emotionally distressing subject matter. Whatever one's opinion might be on resilience, development, or the challenges of literary study, it must be acknowledged that there are often specific teaching contexts that preclude the teaching of certain subjects or titles for a whole range of reasons that don't need going into. 

So here are the options available if one wants to find a pattern of study for Year 12 that focuses on texts that are more uplifting, joyful, or fun. Before I list them I would like to add one disclaimer - it is admittedly quite slim pickings as a great deal of texts at this level do indeed deal with subject matter that could be seen by some as distressing. The list below is one interpretation that seeks to find a path around this but I am sure there will be contrary opinions of which texts best fit this brief and I am always happy to hear these.

Common Module - Texts and Human Experiences

• Collected Poems by Rosemary Dobson - observational poetry that focuses more on the artistic and aesthetic. 
• Billy Elliot, directed by Stephen Daldry - the class-based themes are a little depressing but the message of this film (and its ending) make it ultimately quite uplifting. 

Standard Module A - Language, Identity and Culture

• Contemporary Asian Australian Poets, edited by Adam Aitken, Kim Cheng Boey, and Michelle Chahill - some of the poetry touches on the impact of past trauma and present prejudices but, overall, these poems aren't excessively negative or emotionally challenging. 
• Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw - there are a few comic elements in this famous play but be warned about some of the now-outdated language that may prompt awkward conversations (such as its use of the word 'slut'). 
• The Castle, directed by Rob Sitch - easily the most pleasant text within this module. Funny and with a feel-good ending that resonates with a lot of Australians. 

Standard Module B - Close Study of a Text

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon - some aspects of this novel, such as the strained familial relationships and the fate of the dog in the title, might be challenging for some students. That said, this is a fun text in the way that it plays with language, structure, etc., and this may be enough to keep things light if you approach it in a structuralist fashion.
• Coast Road by Robert Gray - focuses on landscape related to coastal Australia.
• A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare - I left The Merchant of Venice out of the Common Module above due to its themes of racism and retribution. I do think that Midsummer definitely fits the bill for 'joyous' though in its exploration of love, the fairy realm, and the presence of the ass-like tradesman Bottom. 
• The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir - fun and quirky and ultimately uplifting in the way its protagonist triumphs over his environment.

Standard Module C - The Craft of Writing

• 'Popcorn' by Carol Chan - a fun piece of poetry that doesn't ask anything too emotionally-demanding of the reader.
• 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' by Robert Frost - the poet's exploration of nature is fairly uncontroversial and shows a certain admiration that's hard to fault.
• 'May Your Pen Grace the Page' by Luka Lesson - a beautiful and engaging piece that explores a writer's love of writing. 

Advanced Module A - Textual Conversations

All of the options in this module have some varying degrees of darkness in them. If I was pressed to pick the least distressing pairing of texts, I would have to go with either: 

• Richard III / Looking for Richard - which admittedly features its fair share of murder but, hopefully, the passage of time dims the negative impact of this. 
• The Tempest / Hag-Seed - which features more comedy than any of the other options. 

Advanced Module B - Critical Study of Literature

• Emma by Jane Austen - romance and Georgian comedy.
• Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas - a quirky and left-field text that, if the teacher is brave in exploring its many eccentricities, can be quite rewarding for students in a range of ways not dependent on emotional challenges.
• Earth Hour by David Malouf - poetry focused on the aesthetics of life. Not particularly controversial.
• Henry IV Part 1 by William Shakespeare - there is the battle near the end that leaves some of the characters dead or sentenced to death but, other than this, Henry IV provides lots of opportunity for laughter with Falstaff. There's also a lot of room for the sort of intellectual discussion that doesn't necessarily plumb the darker corners of Shakespeare's tragedies.

Advanced Module C - Craft of Writing

• 'How to Marry Your Daughters' by Helen Garner - a sassy review / discursive piece that would go well alongside a study of Emma.
• 'Eight Days in a Corset' by Siri Hustvedt - an interesting and playful essay that focuses on fashion and gender.

Extension Elective 1 - Literary Homelands

• Burning Rice by Eileen Chong - there's enough within this suite of poetry to allow for some brighter discussion of culture and identity.

Extension Elective 2 - Worlds of Upheaval

• Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett - this famously absurdist piece of drama is as close to 'fun' as this elective option gets.

Extension Elective 3 - Reimagined Worlds

• If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino - a playful, irreverent, complicated and challenging text that manages to spellbind and engage without delving too much into distressing subject matter.
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin - this feminist sci-fi novel is the quintessential example of creating an engaging drama that isn't reliant on traditional modes of conflict or brutality. Le Guin's text operates on several layers.
• Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift - satirical without being particularly savage. The passage of time has perhaps dimmed any controversy that once surrounded this novel. 
• Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith - award-winning sci-fi poetry. 

Extension Elective 4 - Literary Mindscapes

I'm struggling to find any texts within this option that fit our bill of 'light and joy'. The closest is probably the film Lost in Translation but even that is quite downbeat and in a minor key, plus it raises awkward questions related to the age and power gap within its 'romance' plot. 

Extension Elective 5 - Intersecting Worlds

• Clay by Melissa Harrison - a gently descriptive novel that contrasts the wonders of nature with a very British cityscape.
• The Major Works by William Wordsworth - romantic poetry focused on the beauty and wonders of God's earth.
• Island Home by Tim Winton - focused on environmental issues rather than individualistic human ones.