Unit plan
C2C / Name / Unit: 1 Understanding and analysing satire in texts / Learning area / EnglishYear Level / 10 / Duration / 5 weeks
Class / Teacher
Unit Outline
In this unit students read, view and analyse the techniques used in satirical texts. Students write an analytical essay to demonstrate how an issue, event, individual, group or place is satirised in a text.
Curriculum intent: / · Content descriptions
· Language/Cultural Considerations
· Teaching Strategies
Language / Literature / Literacy
Language for interaction
Understand how language use can have inclusive and exclusive social effects, and can empower or disempower people.
EAL/D students, particularly those in the Beginning and Emerging phases, may not be able to show the depth of their understanding if they are required to respond in extended written or spoken text or to use language to this effect.
Provide alternative methods of teaching this understanding, such as role play or collaborative learning activities.
Understand that people’s evaluations of texts are influenced by their value systems, the context and the purpose and mode of communication.
EAL/D students can provide concrete examples of this from their own experiences.
Allow students to share their experiences (if they wish to do so) and use this as a way of validating their differing evaluations.
Text structure and organisation
Understand how paragraphs and images can be arranged for different purposes, audiences, perspectives and stylistic effects.
Understand conventions for citing others, and how to reference these in different ways.
Expressing and developing ideas
Analyse and evaluate the effectiveness of a wide range of sentences and clause structures as authors design and craft texts.
Evaluate the impact on audiences of different choices in the representation of still and moving images.
EAL/D students, particularly those in the Beginning and Emerging phases, may not be able to show the depth of their understanding if they are required to respond in extended written or spoken text.
Provide alternative methods of eliciting this information, such as graphic organisers, a teacher interview, or creation of a multimedia response.
Refine vocabulary choices to discriminate between shades of meaning, with deliberate attention to the effect on audiences.
This is an opportunity for useful work around vocabulary choices for EAL/D students. Most EAL/D students should not be required to perform this task unassisted.
Employ explicit strategies when modelling this and enable students to take notes (and annotate these in their first language if needed). Work on developing their vocabularies and set realistic targets for them. Use word clines to exemplify shades of meaning. / Responding to literature
Reflect on, extend, endorse or refute others’ interpretations of and responses to literature.
Analyse and explain how text structures, language features and visual features of texts and the context in which texts are experienced may influence audience response.
EAL/D students may have different responses to visual features in texts because visuals are not culturally neutral.
Allow students to explore text features and use this as the basis for whole– class discussions on the varying possibilities of text interpretation.
Evaluate the social, moral and ethical positions represented in texts.
EAL/D students may not be able to show the depth of their understanding if they are required to respond in extended written or spoken text.
Provide alternative methods of demonstrating this, such as graphic organisers, a teacher interview, or creation of a multimedia response.
Examining literature
Identify, explain and discuss how narrative viewpoint, structure, characterisation and devices including analogy and satire shape different interpretations and responses to a text.
If a student is required to perform a task that is both cognitively and linguistically demanding simultaneously (such as producing extended spoken or written text with no support), this may reduce their ability to demonstrate their knowledge and their ability to express this clearly.
Provide alternative methods of demonstrating this, such as graphic organisers, a teacher interview, or creation of a multimedia response. Alternatively, model exemplar essay texts and allow students to use their information (in graphic organisers) to support them when attempting to write an extended response.
Modelling and joint construction are effective strategies for EAL/D students, as they provide appropriate support in cognitively challenging tasks.
Compare and evaluate how ‘voice’ as a literary device can be used in a range of different types of texts such as poetry to evoke particular emotional responses.
Analyse and evaluate text structures and language features of literary texts and make relevant thematic and intertextual connections with other texts.
EAL/D students, particularly those in the Beginning and Emerging phases, may not be able to show the depth of their understanding if they are required to respond in extended written or spoken text.
They may not have the cultural knowledge needed to identify intertextual references.
Expose students to the other texts referred to and assist them to see the connection.
A gradual release of responsibility (modelling of exemplar text, deconstruction of this, joint reconstruction and then independent construction) will assist students to understand the structure, patterns and language features of the desired text.
Creating literature
Create literary texts with a sustained ‘voice’, selecting and adapting appropriate text structures, literary devices, language, auditory and visual structures and features for a specific purpose and intended audience.
EAL/D students, particularly those in the Beginning and Emerging phases, may be hesitant to create a text in a language that is still largely unfamiliar to them.
Allow students to use exemplar texts as models from which they can draw structure or ideas and then re– create their own texts. / Texts in context
Analyse and evaluate how people, cultures, places, events, objects and concepts are represented in texts, including media texts, through language, structural and/or visual choices.
EAL/D students, particularly those in the Beginning and Emerging phases, may not be able to show the depth of their understanding if they are required to respond in extended written or spoken text.
Provide alternative methods of eliciting this information, such as graphic organisers, a teacher interview, or creation of a multimedia response.
Identify vocabulary that may be challenging and explicitly teach vocabulary within texts.
Identify cultural references within texts and fill this information gap prior to reading.
Choose texts that reflect the cultures of the classroom.
Interpreting, analysing, evaluating
Identify and analyse implicit or explicit values, beliefs and assumptions in texts and how these are influenced by purposes and likely audiences.
Choose a reading technique and reading path appropriate for the type of text, to retrieve and connect ideas within and between texts.
Use comprehension strategies to compare and contrast information within and between texts, identifying and analysing embedded perspectives, and evaluating supporting evidence.
Comprehension strategies of EAL/D students should not be assumed.
Identify the student’s level of reading comprehension and provide support as appropriate, teaching the necessary comprehension strategies explicitly.
Explicitly teach new comprehension strategies, such as finding main idea and summarising, using familiar texts.
Creating texts
Create sustained texts, including texts that combine specific digital or media content, for imaginative, informative, or persuasive purposes that reflect upon challenging and complex issues.
Many EAL/D students, particularly those in the Beginning and Emerging phases, will not have the written language proficiency required to create texts. Visuals are also culturally loaded, and require explanation and exploration in the construction of digital and multimodal texts.
Provide text structure frameworks within which to write specific types of texts.
Use model texts to demonstrate and explain the steps in a type of text.
Engage students in teacher– led joint construction of new types of texts.
Allow students to use exemplar texts as models from which they can draw structure or ideas and then re– create their own texts.
Review, edit and refine students’ own and others’ texts for control of content, organisation, sentence structure, vocabulary, and/or visual features to achieve particular purposes and effects.
In order to edit their own work, students need to have the linguistic resources to identify mistakes and determine which are more desirable choices of vocabulary and text structure. The work they produce is indicative of their abilities and reflective of what they have yet to learn.
Peer editing or editing with the teacher can be an informative activity for EAL/D students. Photocopy or print out their work, cut up the sentences and investigate together what effects can be created by manipulating the sentence or word order. Conference with students to assist them to develop these understandings.
General capabilities and Cross-curriculum priorities
Literacy
Students will develop skills in:
· Text knowledge: comprehend texts through listening, viewing and reading
· compose texts through speaking and writing
· grammar knowledge: understand and create texts using text features and grammar
· word knowledge: understand and apply word knowledge
· visual knowledge: understand and interpret visual knowledge.
Critical and creative thinking
Students will develop skills in:
· inquiring through identifying, exploring and clarifying information
· generating innovative ideas and possibilities
· analysing, evaluating and synthesising information
· reflect on thinking, actions and processes.
Personal and social capability
Students will develop skills in:
· self- awareness: recognise and understand own emotions, values, strengths and capabilities
· social awareness: understand and empathise with others’ emotions and viewpoints
· social management: cooperate and communicate effectively with others.
Ethical behaviour
Students will develop skills in:
· understanding ethical concepts and issues
· reflecting on personal ethics in experiences and decision making
· exploring values, rights and ethical principles
Intercultural understanding
Students will develop skills in:
· recognising: identify, observe and describe characteristics of their own culture and the culture of others
· interacting: understand that people have many ways of knowing and being in the world
· respect: appreciate Australia’s social, cultural, linguistic and religious diversity
· reflecting: think critically about their point of view and the point of view of others to facilitate shared understanding to cultivate values and the dispositions of empathy, respect and responsibility.
Cross-curriculum priorities
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and culture
Students will engage with organising idea:
· Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ ways of life are uniquely expressed through ways of being knowing, thinking and doing.
Students will develop a critical understanding of social, historical and cultural contexts, aesthetic qualities, and the impact of different uses of language and text structures.
Relevant prior curriculum
Students require prior experience with:
· understanding how to take account of differing perspectives and points of view
· understanding how different layers of meaning are developed through the use of metaphor, irony and parody
· investigating how evaluation can be expressed directly and indirectly using devices such as allusion, evocative language and metaphor
· analysing and explaining the use of symbols and icons in still and moving images and how these augment meaning
· identifying and evaluating devices that create tone including parody and visual texts
· interpreting, analysing and evaluating how different perspectives of an issue, event, situation, individuals or groups are constructed to serve specific purposes and texts.
Curriculum working towards
The teaching and learning in this unit works towards the following in Year 10 ― higher order skills in analysis and evaluation of social, moral and ethical positions represented in texts.
Supportive learning environment
Differentiation
What do your learners already know, do and value? Where do the learners need and want to be? How do the learners best learn?
Consider the individual needs and of all students, including EAL/D, Gifted and Talented and Special Needs, and provide learning experiences that are accessible to and respectful of the diversity of students’ cultural backgrounds.
Start from where your students are at and differentiate teaching and learning to support the learning needs of all students. Plan and document how you will cater for individual learning needs.
The learning experiences within this unit can be differentiated by increasing the:
· frequency of exposure for some students
· intensity of teaching by adjusting the group size
· duration needed to complete tasks and assessment.
For guided and/or independent practice tasks:
· student groupings will offer tasks with a range of complexities to cater for individual learning needs
· rotational groupings that allow for more or less scaffolding of student learning.
Feedback
How will I inform learners and others about the learner’s progress?
Feedback is information and advice provided by a teacher, peer, parent or self about aspects of someone’s performance. The aim of feedback is to improve learning and is used to plan what to do next and how to teach it. Teachers and students use feedback to close the gap between where students are and where they aim to be. Teachers use self-feedback to guide and improve their teaching practice.
Establish active feedback partnerships between students, teachers and parents to find out:
· what each student already knows and can do
· how each student is going
· where each student needs to go next.
Ensure feedback is timely, ongoing, instructive and purposeful.
Feedback may relate to reading, writing and speaking throughout this unit. In this unit this may include:
Strategically plan opportunities and ways to provide ongoing feedback about:
· identifying and expressing point of view
· explaining how a reader’s response to a text is influenced by their own values and beliefs
· identifying the target and message of a political cartoon
· explaining the tone of a cartoon and how this is achieved
· explaining the meaning of satire
· identifying techniques such as tone, caricature, allegory, symbol, layout, hyperbole, captioning
· considering viewpoints on issues different from their own
· explaining the different layers of meaning in a text
· identifying expression of Affect and Judgment in texts
· explaining how visual elements can influence an audience
· understanding the purpose of an allegory
· analysing a political cartoon for the use of text, language and visual features which can position the audience
· selecting relevant subject matter for their essay