Unit+of+Work+Overview

The Unit of work aims to assist Stage 2 students in the construction of a Power Point presentation that will include written text, visual images and voice audio. In doing so, students will focus on the Human Society and Its Environment outcome //**CCS2.1 Describes events and actions related to the British colonisation of Australia and assesses changes and consequences**//. The unit consists of ten lessons that function interdependently as they develop student understanding of British Colonisation in an interactive and stimulating manner.

Lesson 1


 * At the start of this lesson, the teacher explicitly explains to students the goal which they are working towards over the next 10 lessons. That is, the creation of a rich multimodal text that will contain a factual recount on British colonisation, appropriate accompanying pictures and an audio file. This multimodal text will be displayed via a Power Point presentation.
 * Students are then introduced to the topic of Colonisation via an interactive website (see resource 1).
 * Students explore the interactive website, specifically analysing the written and visual elements.
 * Students fill in a KWL chart that provides a foundation for the upcoming learning in the unit.

Lesson 2
 * Students identify and analyse the key grammatical features of a modeled factual recount on British Colonisation of Australia (see resource 2).
 * Specific features explored include: past tense, particular nouns, general or non-human noun groups, conjunctions and time connectives.
 * This lesson will prepare students for the factual recount which they will have to write in future lessons.

Lesson 3
 * Students are introduced to visual grammar via three images relating to British colonisation (see resource 3).
 * Using these images, specific visual elements are highlighted such as social distance, narrative action images and salience.
 * This lesson will familiarise students with the visual grammar they will need to harness when finding images for their multimodal text on British colonisation.

Lesson 4
 * Students are shown a multimodal text that incorporates written text, visual images and audio (see resource 4)
 * Students analyse the multimodal text and identify the various features that are needed to construct such a text.
 * This lesson will give students an idea as to the type of multimodal text that they will need to produce at the end of this unit.

Lesson 5
 * Students have now learnt about the written and visual grammar required to create a multimodal text on British colonisation.
 * Students have also been introduced to a multimodal text and have identified various features of its composition.
 * This lesson combines student's knowledge from the previous four lessons, as students create a storyboard scaffold that will assist them in making their final multimodal Power Point text (see resource 5).
 * The storyboard scaffold focuses on combining the written and visual aspects required for the multimodal text.
 * In this lesson students are split into 5 groups of 5. Students will be working in these groups for the next 5 lessons as they collaboratively work to create their Power Point on British colonisation.

Lesson 6
 * Students are now armed with enough information to start work on their multimodal text about British colonisation.
 * In this lesson, students engage in independent work, researching the topic of British colonisation via books, websites, artworks and other mediums available within the classroom.
 * After researching, students form into their groups (established in lesson 5) and pool their research together.
 * Students type up their research notes in a word document on the computer.

Lesson 7
 * Students use their research gathered in the previous lesson and begin to write a factual recount on the British colonisation of Australia.
 * Students must employ the correct written grammar techniques of a factual recount - features that were explored in lesson 2.
 * Notes from lesson 2 will be displayed on the IWB.
 * The factual recounts are proof read and edited by the group.
 * After the teacher has seen the final factual recount, students employ the storyboard scaffold explored in lesson 5 and begin to place their written text in a Power Point document.

Lesson 8
 * Students look at their factual recount written in the previous lesson and begin to look for images on British colonisation that support the text (a concept explored in stage 1).
 * When finding visual images, students must keep in mind the visual features explored in lesson 3.
 * Notes from lesson 3 will be displayed on the IWB.
 * As students find appropriate images, they begin to upload them into the Power Point which already contains the factual recount.

Lesson 9
 * All groups should now have a Power Point on British colonisation that contains written and visual literacy elements.
 * In this lesson, students are taught how to upload audio into their Power Point presentation.
 * Students in the group take turns to read the factual recount aloud.
 * Once this has been recorded, students begin to split up the recording and place each section on the right slide in the Power Point.

Lesson 10
 * Students refine their Power Points and make last minute changes to fonts, colour schemes, image positioning.
 * Power Points are presented to the class. Special guests, including other teachers, parents or carers, historians and/or the principal will be invited to view the presentations.