BEST LESSON

BEST LESSONKathleen Pryor

Context

Introductory series of lessons based on text Walk in my Shoes by Alwyn Evans.

Co-Ed AusVELS level 9 classroom of mixed ability.

Students were meant to have read the book over the holidays.

Each period went for 45 minutes.

Lesson One: Background

Why do people move?

Mythbusters Quiz!

Link to AusVELS: Explore and reflect on personal understanding of the world and significant human experience gained from interpreting various representations of life matters in texts.

Theory: Reader Response (Probst 1994), as wanted students to figure out how they felt about the issue and the texts presented, but at the same time needed to challenge preconceptions of particular students.

Lesson Two: Get Involved

Activity: ‘Time to Flee’ Roleplay

AusVELS: Use interaction skills to present and discuss an idea and to influence and engage an audience.

Theory: Three Dimensions, particularly cultural dimension (Durrant & Green 2000), Also encourages the students to be a ‘text participant’ in the Four Resources Model (Freebody & Luke 1990).

Lesson Three: It Could Happen

Students played interactive game ‘Exit Australia’ where they are challenged to escape from Australia and try to seek asylum in a new country.

Game does not always have a happy ending, only small proportion of players make it to a new safe life, and generally only after 20-30 years of waiting!

AusVELS: Explore and reflect on personal understanding of the world and significant human experience gained from interpreting various representations of life matters in texts

Theory: Multiliteracies (Cope & Kalanztis 2009) students are encouraged to interact with a variety of texts. Critical Literacy (Luke 2011) as students are challenged through discussion as to what the text is doing to them as readers.

Lesson Four: Time to Create

Students respond to the issue

Theory: Four Resources Model (Allen & Freebody 1990) as students engage as text users. The main theory throughout this mini unit is critical literacy as the students are encouraged to challenge the issue and what they have read and experienced in order to ‘scrutinise the belief systems held in texts’ (DEECD 2007).

Options for persuasive writing:-Write a letter to the editor about your view on refugees in detention.-Write an editorial article with the title ‘Why Australia should take more refugees’.-Write a letter to Julia Gillard asking her to end mandatory detention for refugees.

Options for creative writing-Write a series of diary entries (minimum of 3) in which you are a refugee undertaking a journey from a war-torn country (pick a country or make one up). Your diary must have at least one entry in your home country, at least one during your journey and at least one entry after arriving in your new country.-Write a story where you are a refugee who is newly arrived in Australia. What sort of experiences are new to you and what resistance do you face from the community?

AusVELS: Create imaginative, informative and persuasive texts that present a point of view and advance or illustrate arguments, including texts that integrate visual, print and/or audio features

Resources

Amnesty International Teacher’s Pack http://www.amnesty.org.au/refugees/comments/25964/

Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. ‘Multiliteracies: new Literacies, new learning’. Pedagogies: an international journal. Vol.4, 2009, 164-195.

Department of Education (2007). Evidence-based research for masterful literacy teaching. East Melbourne: Department of Education.

Luke, A. (2011). Keywords: Critical literacy. Theory into practice. Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology.

Myths, Facts & Solutions (ASRC) http://www.asrc.org.au/media/documents/myths-facts-solutions-info.pdf

Probst, R. (1994) ‘Reader response theory and the english curriculum’ The english journal 83:3, 37-44.

SBS School Resources (including ‘Exit Australia’) http://www.sbs.com.au/goback/schools/resources/series/1