Learning & Teaching Sequences for Reading – Non-Fiction Level 5-6
Australia Leader in Trashing Refugee Rights
Sample text: Australia Leader in Trashing Refugee Rights
(Mark Baker, The Age, April 15, 2006, http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/australia-leader-in-thrashing-refugee-rights/2006/04/14/1144521502050.html).
The learning and teaching activities at this level focus on reading a number of articles that cover a particular topic of current interest being targeted in the media. It is expected that students would read several texts that address the issue; identify the perspective of each and the information used to support it; and compare and evaluate two action sequences described in the texts using various criteria.
Australia Leader in Trashing Refugee Rights relates to Australia’s recent policy regarding refugee rights. This article by Mark Baker from The Age (April 15, 2006) is used to exemplify the reading activities. It is expected that the teaching and learning strategies illustrated for this article can be readily applied to other selected articles.
The reading outcomes to be targeted include students:
- Showing literal comprehension of the article. For example, they:
- Retell the key and subordinate ideas.
- Answer questions, record targeted information and support their interpretations with information from the text.
- Say questions that the text answers.
- Recognise the use of figurative and metaphoric language and cultural or historical perspectives in their retelling.
- Showing inferential comprehension of the article in a range of ways. For example, they:
- Read between the lines and infer features and characteristics of key concepts.
- Infer cause and effect across paragraphs, predict possible events and consequences.
- Infer 'What would happen if…?' by changing conditions in the text and predict the nature of changes.
- Suggest why concepts or events are described in particular ways and suggest alternative ways of describing them.
- Identify how sociocultural values, attitudes and beliefs are presented in particular texts.
- Analyse the ideas in two or more articles on the issue and explain the ways in which a text could change if set in a different social, cultural, historical or industrial context.
- Suggesting the author’s purpose for writing the article, her or his point of view or attitudes and how well the text achieved its purpose, students evaluate the quality of the information presented and analyse how social values or attitudes are conveyed. They compare the ideas presented in several articles on the topic, infer the purposes of each and identify the dispositions and attitudes of each author.
- Describing the characteristics of texts and how these influence how the texts achieve their purposes, students:
- Analyse how writers use language to convey their intention and to represent characters, people and events.
- Compare the language used in two or more articles about the issue (for example, figurative language and metaphor) and analyse and explain similarities and differences between articles.
- Discuss how the ideas in an article are determined by the context, time or culture in which they are based and identify the language used to present points of view from particular social, political or cultural perspectives (for example, how different groups would construct conservation in text).