Building the Context: The Imaginative Landscape
Posted by: soulcradler in Reflection, TeachingRelated posts: (Re)Viewing the Imaginative Landscape
A conceptual framework is required for students to place their initial explorations of study within a Context. Studying in this manner is new to students as well as us as teachers, and it helps to remember that in guiding students through their initial inquiries into the context.
Exploration of The Imaginative Landscape can begin quite simply:
Students may be asked to create shorter pieces of writing or reflection upon internal/emotional landscapes (a good idea to see their writing early in the piece)
Students may be introduced to short stories or poems which convey a sense of the Imaginative Landscape. For this task we used ‘Australia’ and ‘Poland’ by Ania Walwicz; and ‘Municipal Gum’ and ‘We are Going’ by Oodgeroo Noonuccal. The poems use a range of techniques, including personification of the landscape, and the author imaginatively situating herself as part of the landscape.
Students may conduct independent research on a landscape artist. For this task, students prepared an oral presentation in pairs, responding to these key questions:
- The artist’s most famous work/s
- The ideas/ideology represented through their work
- How their ideas are represented symbolically through their work
- How this vision relates to the idea of The Imaginative Landscape.
Some of the artists that students researched included Frederick McCubbin, Arthur Boyd, The Papunya Tula Movement, and Salvador Dali.
These are just some basic ideas to get started with, and are based on written resources that I have drawn upon for my class, including the VATE Inside Contexts CDROM, The Insight English for Year 12 textbook, and others.
It’s important that students devise a means of collecting their reflections early on, whether it be in a journal, an updated mind map/electronic mind map, or simply a list of generated ideas and statements.
Next, Exploring the Imaginative Landscape through Fly Away Peter.
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