Lesson 2: Deconstructing The City: The verbal and visual

Links to the Victorian Curriculum – English

Reading and Viewing, Literature: Literature and context

Level 5: 

• Use metalanguage to describe the effects of ideas, text structures and language features on particular audiences (Content description VCELT314)

Level 6: 

• Identify and explain how choices in language, including modality, emphasis, repetition and metaphor, influence personal response to different texts (Content description VCELT342)

Reading and Viewing, Literature: Examining Literature

Level 6: 

• Identify the relationship between words, sounds, imagery and language patterns in narratives and poetry such as ballads, limericks and free verse (Content description VCELT344)

Reading and Viewing, Literacy: Texts in context

Level 5: 

• Analyse the text structures and language features used in imaginative, informative and persuasive texts to meet the purpose of the text (Content description VCELY320)

Writing, Language: Expressing and developing ideas

Level 6: 

• Investigate how complex sentences can be used in a variety of ways to elaborate, extend and explain ideas (Content description VCELA350)

Writing, Language: Text structure and organisation

Level 5: 

• Understand that the starting point of a sentence gives prominence to the message in the text and allows for prediction of how the text will unfold (Content description VCELA321)

Writing, Language: Expressing and developing ideas

Level 5: 

• Understand how noun groups/phrases and adjective groups/phrases can be expanded in a variety of ways to provide a fuller description of the person, place, thing or idea (Content description VCELA324)

Level 6: 

• Understand how ideas can be expanded and sharpened through careful choice of verbs, elaborated tenses and a range of adverb groups/phrases (Content description VCELA351)

Speaking and Listening, Literature: Literature and context

Level 5: 

• Present a point of view about particular literary texts using appropriate metalanguage, and reflecting on the viewpoints of others (Content description VCELT336)
  

Theory/practice connections

Understanding characters in narratives is more than simply offering character description. Rich narratives show how characters change across the text. We can monitor how characters change by considering their experiences, what they say, and why the characters act in particular ways.

The setting and the plot contribute to the reasons for characters to change. It is important for students to be able to infer meaning, in order to reach deep understandings about characters and the themes that surround them.

Picture storybooks provide the reader with multiple sources to make meaning. The visuals may mirror the verbal; provide additional information or provide an alternate reading to the written text. Analysing the interplay between the visuals and the written text will provide scope for a character study.

Learning intention

We are learning to analyse character changes that occur in stories and note why these occur.

Success criteria

• I can articulate how and why a character has changed.
• I can relate a character's feelings and actions to the way they change.
• I can use evidence in the text to support my ideas.

Role of the reader

Text meaning maker: focusing on decoding the elements in the visuals and understanding how the grammatical elements add meaning to the text.

Group size

Individual, partner, small group, whole class.

Learning sequence to deconstruct The City

1. Read the text to the students, pausing at certain stages to offer think time. Think time is a quiet reflective time, when students can record their thinking, note a question or make a comment. Once the text has been read, students share their thinking in small groups.
2. Re-read the text to students. Explain to students that they are going to plot the changes that occur with the two main characters - the woman and the boy. This will be achieved by analysing the pictures and the texts on each double page spread. Students work in pairs to provide an analysis of a double page spread, by examining the following areas:
   
   • page number
   • what has happened
   • what the character says or does
   • how the character has changed
   • what the pictures tell the reader
   • what the words tell the reader.
   Students share their thinking with the class group. By participating in this task, students are presenting a collective recount of the story, they analyse the aspects of plot, consider characters motive and feeling, and have the opportunity to address the story's themes.
   
   Text deconstruction of The City by Armin Greder​ (docx - 449.98kb) 
   

This document can be used to lead teacher discussion or be explored with students in small groups.

Differentiation

Comprehending text at the inferential and evaluative level relies on the students' background knowledge, vocabulary and critical thinking. Some students will need greater support in these areas. Teacher knowledge about the students is vital, when determining what support is needed and how the support is enacted. The downloadable table provides teachers with some insights into the text analysis, which can be used for explicit teaching of concepts or language, should it be needed. Students will need an understanding of the metalanguage to discuss the visual and language features.

All students should have the opportunity to construct texts, with the above mentioned concepts and language structures.