Lesson 3: Using Remembering Lionsville as a mentor text: Joint construction

Links to the Victorian Curriculum – English

Writing, Language: Expressing and developing ideas

Level 4:

  • Understand that the meaning of sentences can be enriched through the use of noun groups/phrases and verb groups/phrases and prepositional phrases (Content description VCELA292)
  • Incorporate new vocabulary from a range of sources, including vocabulary encountered in research, into own texts (Content description VCELA293)

Writing, Literature: Creating literature

Level 3:

Writing, Literacy: Creating texts

Level 3:

  • Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts demonstrating increasing control over text structures and language features and selecting print and multimodal elements appropriate to the audience and purpose (Content description VCELY266)

Speaking and Listening, Literacy: Interacting with others

Level 3:

  • Listen to and contribute to conversations and discussions to share information and ideas and negotiate in collaborative situations and use interaction skills, including active listening and clear, coherent communications (Content description VCELY275)

Links to the Victorian Curriculum – English as an Additional Language (EAL)

Pathway B

Speaking and listening

Level BL:

  • Rely on other speakers to scaffold, interpret, clarify or elaborate short, simple conversations (VCEALC165)
  • Respond appropriately verbally or non-verbally when spoken to (VCEALC163)


Level B1:

  • Participate in extended conversations with reliance on other speakers to scaffold, interpret, clarify or elaborate (VCEALC243)
  • Interact and respond appropriately verbally and non-verbally in simple conversations with teacher or peers (VCEALC241)

Level B2:

  • Comprehend social English in most familiar contexts, and use conversation partners to support understanding (VCEALC324)
  • Initiate and maintain short, structured social interactions with increasing fluency (VCEALC322)

Level B3:

  • Initiate and participate in casual exchanges and in learning contexts (VCEALC404)
  • Participate in most social situations using English (VCEALC402)

Writing

Level BL:

  • Draw pictures to communicate activities or events and orally dictate sentences for the teacher to record (VCEALC215)
  • Use topic-specific vocabulary encountered in classroom activities (VCEALL235)
  • Use basic descriptive words (VCEALL232)
  • Create basic texts, with support and modelling (VCEALA220)
  • Contribute ideas to shared writing activities (VCEALA221)

Level B1:

  • Use additional information to support simple narrative or recount sentences (VCEALC295)
  • Incorporate learnt vocabulary into writing (VCEALL315)
  • Use a small range of simple descriptive phrases (VCEALL312)
  • Create short, simple texts for particular purposes, with some support and modelling (VCEALA300)
  • Contribute to shared simple brainstorming of ideas and identify relevant vocabulary to be incorporated into the written work (VCEALA301)

Level B2:

  • Add visual information to written texts (VCEALC375)
  • Use modelled vocabulary appropriately (VCEALL395)
  • Use simple extended descriptive phrases (VCEALL392)
  • Create a small range of texts based on modelling (VCEALA380)
  • Plan, with support, the format of a text according to its communicative purpose (VCEALA381)


Level B3:

  • Use a range of key vocabulary appropriately (VCEALL474)
  • Write using extended descriptive phrases (VCEALL471)
  • Create mood and feeling through the selection of appropriate vocabulary and idiom (VCEALL475)
  • Plan individually and review own writing (VCEALA460)

Theory/practice connections

Joint construction is an example of 'designed in scaffolding', where the teacher organises tasks to act as supports, which are used while students are developing knowledge and consolidating skills.

Joint construction can occur between pairs of students or in small groups. Organising students in pairs or in small groups provides the affordance for peer-to-peer learning.

It can also occur between the teacher and the whole class, or the teacher and a small group of students. Shared writing is a common strategy that is used to create a jointly constructed text.

Additional resources

Picture books with collage or mixed media illustrations are useful to use as exemplar texts. Jeannie Baker's books, such as Window or The Hidden Forest or Tohby Riddle's Unforgotten.

Learning intention

We are learning to use a range of visual and written techniques.

Success criteria

  • I can describe and use various visual techniques and explain the effect I can create with them.
  • I can evaluate the effectiveness of the visual techniques I use.
  • I can build description before and after a main noun.

Role of the reader

Text analyst: examining the elements of visual and verbal codes that are used to communicate a message, and critiquing the effect these elements have on the reader and viewer.

Text user: Texts are written for different purposes. The language and visual structures and features of the text can be selected to best address the text's purpose.

Lesson sequence

Sequence is over more than one session.

  1. Students draw the artefact used in lesson one, in the style of Bronwyn Bancroft, using heavy black outlining and a patterned effect. Bronwyn Bancroft has taken her inspiration from her indigenous background. Students could use any cultural or creative design. They must consider what they wish to convey through the following questions:
    • What do you want to show happening?
    • What feelings do you want the viewer to experience?
    • What will you highlight in the visuals as important and how will this be achieved (use of colour, salient position on page, a line pathway to draw the viewer's eye)?
    • What will be included in the visual?
    • What art techniques will you use and why are they chosen - black outlining, use of photo collage, strong colour?
  2. Students work in pairs and take photos of the artefact. Print these out for students to use in a picture, inspired by the collage work used in Bronwyn Bancroft's illustrations. Students compare their illustration and the collage and critique the aesthetics of these techniques.
  3. Students share their illustration with a small group, explaining the design and why they used it.
  4. Jointly constructing the words: Students record the name of the artefact in the middle of a sentence strip card.  If students had a photo artefact, showing an action (for example, playing), encourage this to be changed into a noun (playing becomes 'the game'). Students write an adjective or a set of adjectives to describe the artefact and an adjectival to provide further description. It may help students to write adjectivals, if they are given a list of prepositions (in, on, with, near). This activity will help students build up their knowledge of noun groups. For example:

    A golden, straw (determiner 'a', adjectives 'golden', 'straw') basket (artefact-noun) with colourful decorations (adjectival-giving further information about the noun).

    The old, rusty (determiner 'the', adjectives 'old', 'rusty') lock (artefact-noun) that wouldn't open (adjectival-giving further information about the noun).

    Students share their noun group writing with their small group, who offer suggestions to other ways of describing the artefact. By the end of this part of the lesson, each student will have a bank of words to describe their artefact.

Differentiation

For students still requiring support at the end of this lesson, a guided writing/small group mini lesson can be organised. This would allow the teacher to scaffold the students understanding by careful questioning, further model concepts, reinforce the metalanguage and monitor students' understandings.