Developing Literacy And Connection With Aboriginal Pedagogy - Year 2 Essay Lesson Plan. (70 Characters)

Focus

Duration

Year level

Literacy – Big Rain Coming

1 hour

2

Lesson Overview

In this lesson, the students will read / listen to / watch a narration of the picture based story “Big Rain Coming” by Katrina Germein, and develop a critical understanding and awareness of the indigenous culture. The objective of this lesson is to help the children develop literacy through a story that narrates and explicates a connection between the culture and lifestyle of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, with nature, land, natural life forms. This lesson is a part of a sequential lesson plans designed keeping the Aboriginal Pedagogy in mind, and caters not only to the Aboriginal children but is inclusive of all children in the class. The lesson also employs Yunkaporta’s “8 ways of learning” as the desired pedagogical tool. The students will summarise and interpret the story as per their understanding and use an accumulation of a variety of tools like writing, images and drawing symbols to achieve that purpose.

Summary of the story

“Big Rain Coming” is a story book for aboriginal children written by Katrina Germein. It narrates the story of a dry and hot land where one Sunday a big and dark cloud was seen. Stephen, the village elder said that a big rain will come, but the following week, no rain came. The animals, did many things like digging holes and drinking drops of water to keep themselves cool, the children swam in the warm water of the billabong. Then on Saturday the rain finally came and everyone was happy.

The story has an assortment of different elements that are connected to the aboriginal culture and lifestyle, like the land connections, co-dependency of animals and humans, alongside the natural processes like rain, presence of minimalist technologies like rainwater harvesting, as well As specific Australian and aboriginal terminology like ‘Billabong’, etc.

ACARA Learning Outcomes. (ACARA, n.d.)

1. Discuss how depictions of characters in print, sound and images reflect the contexts in which they were created (ACELT1587)

2. Discuss different texts on a similar topic, identifying similarities and differences between the texts (ACELY1665)

3. Innovate on familiar texts by experimenting with character, setting or plot (ACELT1833)

ATSI land and cultural history – Organising ideas (ACARA, n.d.)

OI.3 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples have holistic belief systems and are spiritually and intellectually connected to the land, sea, sky and waterways. (Country)

OI.5 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ ways of life are uniquely expressed through ways of being, knowing, thinking and doing. (Culture)

Learning Outcomes

1. Students will understand and summarise the story using a combination of written texts, symbols and images.

2. Students will learn the importance and relevance of nature, land and natural connections in the life of the Aboriginal people.

3. Students will learn that particular symbolic aspects of the story has more connections with the land and the people than just a literary connection.

4. Students will learn to use written and spoken structures to narrate the core concept of a story.

Lesson Structure

Activity

Pedagogical strategy (8 ways of learning)

Time

Introduction.

The students sit on the floor on a mat in a semi – circle. Take the book and opens it to reveal the picture on the first page.

Reinforce nonverbal communication strategies to the students like what the teachers’ gestures mean for the class. For instance, pointing fingers at someone means that student has to speak, or the students are expected to raise hands prior to speaking.

Draw a sequential lesson plan with arrows on the board for the students to be able to understand the flow of information.

Ask questions about the children’s favourite weather and steadily progress towards what they do during a rainy season. Include questions that link to family, kin and community.

15 minutes

Main Lesson.

Part 1: Narration

Read out the story from the book to the students.

Draw a symbol for each element or entity present in the story for the students to understand the correlation. For instance, draw a symbol to represent animals like dogs and the frog, draw one for children, one for the adults, one for the billabong, one for the clouds and one for the rain etc.

10 minutes

Part 2: Links

After finishing the story, ask the students to connect the story to their lives and their homes and respond which of the elements they are familiar with or which of the elements they are more or less connected with on a daily basis.

While narrating the story, use the symbols drawn on the board to make connections with land, nature and people.

Make the students connect their experiences of land, community, family and nature, using the symbols.

10 minutes

Part 3: Summary

After the completion of the narration, the students go back to the desk with their books and notebooks, take out their pens/pencils and listen to the teacher’s instructions.

1. Draw the symbols in your notebook and write a small description of what these symbols mean. E.g. draw the symbol for the billabong and write the word ‘billabong’ next to it.

2. Next, make a small connection between the elements and the symbols using the following sentences.

The Children and the Dogs swam together in the billabong.

The children (SYMBOL) and the dogs (SYMBOL) swam together in the billabong (SYMBOL).

3. Write about what you understood from the story in your own words and draw the symbols.

Ask (and help) the students to make a rought draft of their work on their notebook and them finalise the work on an A3 sized paper.

 15 minutes

Conclusion

At the end of the lesson, gather all the students in front of the class one by one, and present their work to the class and talk about their work in a minute or two.

Display the students’ works in the class as a presentation and also ask the students to talk to the audience about how the connection the story shares with land, nature, community and family.

10 minutes.