Unit+Overview

=**Plight of the Bush stone curlew - Unit overview** =

media type="file" key="wikivideo" width="360" height="360" align="right" __Lesson 1__ lesson one requires the students to read a range of text types on the topic of land clearing in Australia. Some texts specifically relate to the Dubbo and the Macquarie river area.

a. The students will be taking notes, practicing the skill of summerising in their own words.

b. They will be working in gropus to collate their knowlede/ideas using a retrieval chart. Each group to be given a particular text to work on.

__Lesson 2__ Invite some knowledgable members of the community to the school (farmer, greens member/environmentalist) to address the class on the the topic of sustainable land use by providing their opinion on the topic. This will satisfy talking and listening outcomes and content knowledge for the HSIE topic of sustainability.

__Lesson 3__ Class debate on the topic of "The land is only valuable for its ability to be used for growing crops and farm animals".

__Lesson 4__ Using the knowledge that has accumulated from the guest talks and class debate the students will produce an exposition on their prefered position on the issue of sustainable land use. Depending on the classes prior knowledge about expositions, this text type may need to be introduced. A modeled writing class example of an exposition may need to be created. This lesson will address the written grammar relevant to expositions.

__Lesson 5__ Introduce the multimodal text type: clay animation by viewing some varied examples. Discuss the process that would be involved in making a class clay animation to persuade an auidence about the class's opinion on this issue.

Discuss the following features; a. Images and visual grammar. b. Visual cues to help understand the story. c. Accompanying text. d. Dialogue. e. Sound.

__Lesson 6__ Create a storyboard for the clay animation to address the most agreed upon class posiition on this issue and to persuade the intended audience to believe the same about this issue. Firstly the visual grammar necessary to make this multimodal text type will need to be explicitly taught. Such visual grammar devices as shot distance, framing, offer.

__Lesson 7__ Visual arts lesson about making clay sculptures. This would allow the students to explore the medium of clay sculpture and practice techniques that they could use to produce their ideas.

__Lesson 8__ Write and produce the voice over to accompany the clay animation using emotive and persuasive language and tones.

__Lesson 9__ Filming the clay animations. Editing the final multimodal text incorporating all the elements necessary for the multimodal text using appropriate computer software.

__Lesson10__ Viewing the clay animation at a class level and at a wider audienece level to get feedback in terms of the successfulness of the visual and verbal grammar techniqes employed. This reflection on the process of producing the class animation is a powerful aspect of children's learning. The students will also engage in self-assessment on the final product and the process of producing this persuasive piece of clay animation.