WALKING TALKING TEXTS: PLANNING A Unit of WORK with the NTCF

Aspects of English to teach at the sentence level from the book The Burnt Stick for a Junior Secondary unit of work.

The grammatical items are those that need to be explicitly taught at this level.

(Not all grammatical features of the novel are listed here)

Tense

Overall the novel is in the simple past
Future conditional tense within a past tense context – He would be initiated when he became a man
Past Perfect:
The mission had been built.
Use of the infinitive:
They taught them how to grow crops
Use of the emphatic: They did not teach
NB Categorise verbs into typeseg (action, feeling/thinking, verbal) / Sentence form
Complex – most sentences have embedded clauses
eg. Most of the children like John Jagamarra had been taken from their mothers when they were very young, and sent by the Government Men from the Welfare Department to the Fathers at places like Pearl Bay.
Broken down
Most of the children like John Jagamarra had been taken from their mothers.
They were taken when they were very young
They were sent by the Government Men from the Welfare Department to the Fathers.
The Fathers were at places like Pearl Bay
NB: Take complex sentences and break into simple sentences. / Person
Written in third person, except in direct speech – mixture of future, past and present. / Negative forms
Regular /inclusion of not– was not, did not
Expression of absence – nowhere, nothing, nobody said a thing; nobody knew anything (everybody knew nothing); nor were there families there
Inclusion of other words:
My papers have never been wrong.
Pronouns/pronoun reference
3rd person - themselves, her, him
wh-who…whom
possessive – his, her
relative pronouns – that, which,
NB: as the novel is read, build up charts categorising pronouns and reference item
Possessive / Person
/ Prepositions/prepositional phrases
Make a list of prepositions in the novel and check that students understand their meaning.
EG
Sitting through the long afternoons, sweating in their shirts and trousers.
·  Within the camp
Could be
·  At the camp
·  In the camp
How does the use of within change the meaning? / Ellipsis
Where words are presumed and the meaning is carried despite their absence…
Stories of a past long gone and yet, strangely, still with them. Of the Crow………. Of the King Brown Snake……. Of how the frilled necked lizard.
Omission of ‘Stories’ to start each sentence. NB the use of the full stop and capital letter rather than a semi colon could be described as a literary device.
The colour of evening, so much darker than his own (colour) / Expressions of quality
Adverbial forms
After all – expression of rounding up
Still, it was not like home
At these times..
Using two or more adjectives
eg
ripe, crimson watermelons
pearl shining sea
adjectives used differently
swim naked
narrow, iron bed
cool desert night
Use of Imagery
·  Colour of evening
·  Ties of blood and country through his mother and grandmother
·  Fear flowing into himself
·  First splinter of light
Expressions of quantity
Most of / Time markers/temporal words
During
through / Possessive forms
Themselves / Conjunctions
Because… (Signifying reason)
So that (purpose)
Though (although)… signifying comparison)
But…. (signifying comparison/denial)
Nouns
Abstract nouns
Eg
Self-parody
Her prescence
(noun groups)
The play of firelight
The scent of woodsmoke and tobacco. The grieving (when an article is in front of a word, that indicates a noun, if ‘the’ is taken away / Genre
Narrative recount in four stages
Part 1
Setting of the scene narrative Recount (past as present)
Part 2
Recall/reflection on past life (conditional tense)
Part 3
Narrative – back in time (complication 1), recalling actual event
Part 4
Conclusion – back to the present (as a man now)
PLANNING OUTLINE / DETAILS FOR A PARTICULAR BOOK
·  Choose a book / The Burnt Stick by
Anthony Hill
§  Analyse the text for the language items / See attached sheet
§  Evaluate the book's suitability for the class, given what you now know about the language in the book. If the language is too hard or too easy, begin the process again with another book. / Good for Stage 1
Decide on two or three of these language items to concentrate on for the unit:
Identify ESL outcomes from the NTCF – p200-201 (Language Structures and Features)
Identify indicators for the appropriate level
Link these outcomes to the esseNTial learnings and identify outcomes
Identify EsseNTial Learnings indicators
Go to the NTCF and locate outcomes from Learning Areas for this unit of work and for the levels of students in your class.
Write learning outcomes for each of the activities you have identified which link to the levels of the students in your class, for the curriculum areas identified
Identify indicators for the appropriate level
Link these outcomes to the esseNTial learnings and identify outcomes and indicators
Identify links to other Learning Areas

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