Teacher Inquiry 2023: Improving reading and writing engagement with my Year 9 students through creating mixed ability groups within my Year 9 class.
Throughout Term 2 my inquiry explored different reading and writing literacy strategies with my focus class 9TKl. Term 2 was a time to help ground my students with the basic literacy skills in the hope that it would engage them and make them feel comfortable and confident in their own literacy journey. Across Term 2 my focus class were working in their writing groups and focused on unpacking texts, reading in chunks, identifying key vocabulary, learning different aspects of written texts and crafting their own written text. I have documented their journey so far and it has helped me reflect on my own practice - seeing what areas that I need to cover and also appreciate the progress that they have made. See the journey that I have documented below:
The focus for this term is Visual Text. The students have spent the last week studying the full visual text (Disney's Encanto). Prior to the full visual text, I wanted to introduce the visual text language to the students so that they knew what it was before we launched into the full film study for Encanto. I decided to do a short film study to help introduce the students the key language features (visual techniques) for film.
THE VISUAL TEXT: TWO CARS ONE NIGHT
The film that we watched was Taika Waititi's 2004 'Two Cars One Night'
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| Two Cars One Night (Dir: Taika Waititi 2004) |
The response from my students to this text was positive. They enjoyed the text because it was 'easy to follow', 'a love story - I like those stories' and 'it looked and sounded familiar'. When a text resonates with your students, as a teacher - this is gold! We spent one session watching through the film twice, with a break in between to discuss the following questions around the film (the questions were all plot based as the students had done plot analysis for their written texts in Term 2). The questions we looked after the initial viewing were:
- What is the name of film? Who directed it?
- What is the film about?
- Who is in the film?
- What type of person is the male character? Describe their personality.
- What type of person is the female character? Describe her personality.
- Where is the film set (where does it take place)?
The students discussed these questions in their groups and then there was an opportunity for them to feedback to the whole class. As this was a common practice in Term 2 with the written texts, navigating and managing the discussion this time around was good because the students new the expectations. The questions - although not linked to the visual text language features focus - gave me an idea on my student's understanding of the text and how they respond to visual texts.
VISUAL TEXT LANGUAGE FEATURES
After our discussion I used the next two sessions going through film techniques. Film literacy is an important set of literacy aspects that the students need to know. Film study is a staple in both our Junior and Senior English programs. It is important for our students to know the film language features - their function, effect and impact in the film overall.
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| Film Technique Presentation |
This a film technique presentation that I have linked and used my film study workspaces and that is also on my Google site (link here). I went through this with the students and we spent time going through each camera shot, angle and technique. I was surprised as there a few students who had already covered this in Year 8.
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| Camera Shot/Angle Task |
From here the students worked on the Film Techniques document focusing on the shots/angles from Two Cars One Night. The students had to write the definition for the camera shots/type and then screenshot an example from the film to accompany their written definition. This was a good exercise because the students were able provide two definitions (written and visual).
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| Student exemplar for the Film Techniques |
The short film study was a great segue into the full film study. The students were able to identify the film techniques when we started Encanto this week. We have one more week of looking at film techniques in Encanto and then I start preparing the students for their assessment. I am excited that they are building their literacy skills with film techniques. They are able to identify the key camera shots and what mood/emotion is associated with the shot. I am wanting to link this to the director's purpose and how this impacts the audience. It may be a little ambitious, but I am keen to start navigating the students towards this as it is beyond the text.
Our next steps:
- Complete the Encanto Film Study (Questions/Character Analysis)
- Start the Close Viewing Assessment
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