We have officially started our new unit learning for Term 2 for our NCEA Level 1 English course. The theme for our NCEA Level 1 English course is 'Our Stories, Our Histories + Our Voices'. In Term 1, we looked at 'Our Stories + Our Histories (through film' focusing on the visual text 'The Dark Horse' and the assessment we focused on was 91925. I have reflected on our Term 1 unit and the assessment in my previous blog posts (check the links below):
See Alby's Blog Post Entry (17/03/24)
See Alby' Blog Post Entry (07/04/24)
This term our theme is 'Our Stories + Our Histories (through Poetry)'. The primary text for Term is Tusiata Avia's 'The Savage Coloniser Book'. We will be spending 5 weeks looking at 4 texts from the collection (3 texts selected by the teacher and the final text is selected by the student). In the 5 weeks, we will look the context surrounding the text and how the context influenced the language that Avia used in crafting her poetry. We will unpack each text specifically looking at the context, the language features used and how it all ties in with the purpose of her poetry. The three texts that we have selected from 'The Savage Coloniser Book' are strong and effective poems who have both a rich context that we believe is relevant to our akonga and that they can relate to or identify with. The three texts that we will studying in class are:
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| Tusiata Avia's 'The Savage Coloniser Book' (2019) |
Jacinda Arden goes to the Pacific Forum in Tuvalu and my family colonises her house
BLM
Covid in the time of Primeminiscinda
The poems we are studying and the collection as a whole is confronting and it is meant to drum up conversation. We are excited to start our journey with the students in exploring the texts we have selected. The students will choose the fourth poem from the collection and that will be the fourth text. The fourth text will be the text that they will focus on for the assessment 91924. Below I will outline how the next 5 weeks of the new unit will look.
OUR STORIES + OUR HISTORIES (THROUGH POETRY): Pre Reading Activities
There are a series of pre reading activities that the students do before we launch into the reading of the text. It is important that the students understand the context around each text, as the context and the text both are rich and complex. I will be spending time making sure that the students engage with the pre reading activities so that it will help them understand and appreciate the text.
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| Pre Reading Activity 1 |
For the first pre reading activity the students take a look in the past and review the year 2020. 'The Savage Coloniser Book' was written in 2019 and released in 2020. At the time it was released, there was so much going on in Aotearoa - politically and socially especially with COVID 19. This pre reading activity is a Year in Review and breaks down the main events that happened in Aotearoa in 2020. There are three parts that the students will read and then they will make a list of the main events that happened.
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| Pre Reading Activity 3 |
The second pre reading activity is where the students will look at the author - Tusiata Avia - and the backlash that the text received. This will give students an understanding on the tone of the text and the impact that it has had in both the Maori/Pacific communities and also the wider community (hopefully this article will help them see the positive and negative impact that the text has had). Again, this will help them have an understanding on the overall tone and vibe of Avia's poems.
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| Pre Reading Activity 4 |
The third pre reading activity, the students will explore three different articles that focus on three different events (Jacinda Ardern's trip to Tuvalu for the Pacific Forum, Black Lives Matter and COVID 19 in Aotearoa NZ). Each article is accompanied by a set of questions that the students will answer. This will give them a detailed understanding on each event and what is about. At the time these events took place, our Year 11 students were in intermediate school so their knowledge of the events may be limited. This is the context that they need to know, so we will take our time with this activity.
OUR STORIES + OUR HISTORIES (THROUGH POETRY): The Savage Coloniser Book + Reading Log
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| Reading Log: Understanding the context |
For the three texts that we will study in class, I have created a reading log that the students will complete. The purpose of the reading log is for students to reflect on everything that they have read, connecting it to the pre reading activities and to organize their responses in a way that is scaffolded to the assessment. They will do a reading log for each poem (four in total) and use the work, evidence and information from the reading log for their assessment.
The first part of the reading log 'Understanding the context' - the students will talk about the event/context that is surrounding the text. They can use the information that they had from the pre reading exercise when writing about the context. They will also start to unpack the writer's purpose and start finding evidence (quotes) from the text.
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Reading Log: Language Features
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The second part of the reading log 'Language Features' - the students find quotes from the text that use effective language features. The language features that we are looking for are features such as metaphor, imagery, symbolism, repetition simile. The students will use this in their assessment.
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| Reading Log: Getting Critical |
The third part of the reading log 'Getting Critical' - the students will link the learning from the pre reading activity and reflect on what the text says about the time/circumstances in which it was written and they also have an opportunity to discuss what they have learnt from the text.
I am looking forward to the next 5 weeks where we will explore the texts, unpack the texts and complete the reading log for the texts. I will document the journey and how it falls into our Term 2 assessment: 91924.
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