Lesson 2: Deconstructing The City: The verbal and visual

Links to the Victorian Curriculum – English

Reading and Viewing, Literature: Literature and context

Level 5: 

  • Use metalanguage to describe the effects of ideas, text structures and language features on particular audiences (Content description VCELT314)

Level 6: 

  • Identify and explain how choices in language, including modality, emphasis, repetition and metaphor, influence personal response to different texts (Content description VCELT342)

Reading and Viewing, Literature: Examining Literature

Level 6: 

  • Identify the relationship between words, sounds, imagery and language patterns in narratives and poetry such as ballads, limericks and free verse (Content description VCELT344)

Reading and Viewing, Literacy: Texts in context

Level 5: 

  • Analyse the text structures and language features used in imaginative, informative and persuasive texts to meet the purpose of the text (Content description VCELY320)

Writing, Language: Expressing and developing ideas

Level 6: 

Writing, Language: Text structure and organisation

Level 5: 

  • Understand that the starting point of a sentence gives prominence to the message in the text and allows for prediction of how the text will unfold (Content description VCELA321)

Writing, Language: Expressing and developing ideas

Level 5: 

  • Understand how noun groups/phrases and adjective groups/phrases can be expanded in a variety of ways to provide a fuller description of the person, place, thing or idea (Content description VCELA324)

Level 6: 

  • Understand how ideas can be expanded and sharpened through careful choice of verbs, elaborated tenses and a range of adverb groups/phrases (Content description VCELA351)

Speaking and Listening, Literature: Literature and context

Level 5: 

  • Present a point of view about particular literary texts using appropriate metalanguage, and reflecting on the viewpoints of others (Content description VCELT336)

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

Pathway B

Speaking and listening

Level BL:

  • Identify basic items of information in short spoken texts (VCEALC167)
  • Give a personal response to a text (VCEALC188)

Level B1:

  • Identify some key points of information in short spoken texts, with guidance (VCEALC245)
  • Provide responses to texts (VCEALC268)

Level B2:

  • Identify key points of information in short spoken texts (VCEALC326)
  • Express a personal response to an imaginative text or elements of the text (VCEALC349)

Level B3:

  • Understand a new topic delivered with extensive contextual and teacher support (VCEALC406)
  • Express a personal response to a small range of imaginative texts (VCEALC428)

Reading and viewing

Level BL:

  • Make simple predictions or inferences about a text, with support (VCEALC189)
  • Understand and explore the basic layout and conventions of simple texts (VCEALL200)
  • Read simple, familiar texts with assistance (VCEALC184)
  • Acquire information from simple images, with teacher direction and support (VCEALC186)
  • Participate in activities around class texts (VCEALC190)
  • Use basic terminology of reading (VCEALL202)
  • Use simple present and past tense verb forms to talk about ongoing, current and past actions (VCEALL204)

Level B1:

  • Make simple predictions or inferences about a text (VCEALC269)
  • Understand the purpose and basic organisational features of simple text types (VCEALL280)
  • Understand a range of simple texts based on predictable language structures and vocabulary (VCEALC264)
  • Acquire some information from a small range of images (VCEALC266)
  • Participate in simple group activities on shared texts, with some support (VCEALC270)
  • Recognise the difference between texts in English and texts in other languages (VCEALA275)
  • Use some of the terminology of reading (VCEALL282)
  • Identify simple present and past tense verbs (VCEALL284)

Level B2:

  • Make and substantiate inferences and predictions when reading or listening to a text read aloud (VCEALC350)
  • Understand the purpose and organisational features of common text types (VCEALL361)
  • Read simple, unfamiliar informative, imaginative and persuasive texts, with support (VCEALC345)
  • Acquire information from different types of visual representations in text (VCEALC347)
  • Contribute to group activities or shared texts (VCEALC351)
  • Compare own experiences to those represented in texts (VCEALA356)
  • Understand and use a range of learnt metalanguage to talk about text (VCEALL363)
  • Use knowledge of simple tense and negation to interpret the meaning of written text (VCEALL365)

Level B3:

  • Discuss texts with some understanding of meaning beyond the literal level, moving towards the inferential level (VCEALC429)
  • Interpret the purpose and organisational features of different text types (VCEALL440)
  • Access, interpret and evaluate information from a range of print and digital texts, including visual, multimodal and interactive (VCEALC424)
  • Interpret and explain information from a range of images in text (VCEALC426)
  • Contribute actively to group activities on shared texts (VCEALC430)
  • Compare and contrast aspects of a text in English with a comparable home language text (VCEALA435)
  • Understand and use the appropriate metalanguage to talk about the structures and features of a text (VCEALL442)
  • Interpret the meaning of written text that uses a range of tenses and negation (VCEALL365)

Theory/practice connections

Understanding characters in narratives is more than simply offering character description. Rich narratives show how characters change across the text. We can monitor how characters change by considering their experiences, what they say, and why the characters act in particular ways.

The setting and the plot contribute to the reasons for characters to change. It is important for students to be able to infer meaning, in order to reach deep understandings about characters and the themes that surround them.

Picture storybooks provide the reader with multiple sources to make meaning. The visuals may mirror the verbal; provide additional information or provide an alternate reading to the written text. Analysing the interplay between the visuals and the written text will provide scope for a character study.

Learning intention

We are learning to analyse character changes that occur in stories and note why these occur.

Success criteria

  • I can articulate how and why a character has changed.
  • I can relate a character's feelings and actions to the way they change.
  • I can use evidence in the text to support my ideas.

Role of the reader

Text meaning maker: focusing on decoding the elements in the visuals and understanding how the grammatical elements add meaning to the text.

Group size

Individual, partner, small group, whole class.

Learning sequence to deconstruct The City

  1. Read the text to the students, pausing at certain stages to offer think time. Think time is a quiet reflective time, when students can record their thinking, note a question or make a comment. Once the text has been read, students share their thinking in small groups.
  2. Re-read the text to students. Explain to students that they are going to plot the changes that occur with the two main characters - the woman and the boy. This will be achieved by analysing the pictures and the texts on each double page spread. Students work in pairs to provide an analysis of a double page spread, by examining the following areas:
    • page number
    • what has happened
    • what the character says or does
    • how the character has changed
    • what the pictures tell the reader
    • what the words tell the reader.
    Students share their thinking with the class group. By participating in this task, students are presenting a collective recount of the story, they analyse the aspects of plot, consider characters motive and feeling, and have the opportunity to address the story's themes.

    Text deconstruction of The City by Armin Greder​ (docx - 449.98kb) 

This document can be used to lead teacher discussion or be explored with students in small groups.

Differentiation

Comprehending text at the inferential and evaluative level relies on the students' background knowledge, vocabulary and critical thinking. Some students will need greater support in these areas. Teacher knowledge about the students is vital, when determining what support is needed and how the support is enacted. The downloadable table provides teachers with some insights into the text analysis, which can be used for explicit teaching of concepts or language, should it be needed. Students will need an understanding of the metalanguage to discuss the visual and language features.

All students should have the opportunity to construct texts, with the above mentioned concepts and language structures.