I’m sharing this presentation on the text Inheritance, by Hannie Rayson, which my Year 12 class have just finished studying, and which is on the text list for VCE Units 3 & 4 in 2008. I hope it may be useful to other VCE teachers and students out there.
I have started thinking about this topic as Jabiz is exploring the topic on his new ‘Intrepid Classroom’. See the blog here, and the Ning here. Check out the conversations that have been happening there, it will be worth your while. Music and politics is a topic I’ve always been engaged in, in fact, my music listening is political. I don’t see much of a distinction or difference.
So I thought I’d take you through a couple of musicopolitical connections that I have been pondering lately. First of all, the title of this post comes from the Disposable Heroes of Hiphopcrisy song of the same name. The Disposable Heroes are a previous incarnation of Michael Franti and some members of Spearhead. If you haven’t yet discovered their music, you need to do so here.
Today in class, we continued our work on political cartoons. The students are really into it, and I’ve spent more time on the topic than I originally intended. We started off by talking about stereotypes, and how these are used in caricature. Some of the stereotypes that they came up with included bogans, emos, yobboes, migrants and blondes. This is pretty easy for secondary students to do, their social lives are sometimes dictated by stereotypes. We then talked about the features of politicians that are exaggerated for caricature, including Kevin Rudd’s spectacles, Julia Gillard’s nose, John Howard’s eyebrows, and of course, Peter Garrett’s head.
Some of the cartoons that we were looking at today were satirising the Australian Labor MP Peter Garrett, previously the lead singer of the Australian band Midnight Oil. Many claim that by becoming involved in party politics he sold out on his old ideals (Many Oils lyrics were about indigenous rights, uranium mining, environmentalism, etc). Very interesting discussions here - is music politically involved? Is it party-political?
Some of the students needed Peter Garrett put in context - they knew him as a Labor MP, but hadn’t heard Midnight Oil’s music, and weren’t aware of his role immediately before entering politics as President of the Australian Conservation Foundation. So, recognising the teachable moment, I fired up my laptop and portable speakers, and we listened to ‘Beds Are Burning’ and ‘Power and the Passion’.
Still on the theme of music and politics, Number 2 on our ARIA charts last week was a remix of Paul Kelly & Kev Carmody’s song ‘From Little Things, Big Things Grow’, performed by the Get Up Mob, re-released to acknowledge the Australian government’s apology to the Stolen Generation of indigenous peoples. It gives me shivers.
I think that now, as I am about to move with this class from political cartoons and persuasive language into a unit on poetry, I can see a convergence emerging. Other political artists that I enjoy include Ani DiFranco, John Butler Trio, Public Enemy and Rage Against the Machine. ‘Do yourself a favour’ and check them out. One of my students also mentioned Green Day as political. Note that note all of those artists’ lyrics are ’student appropriate’.Happy listening!
Last week, my year 8 students spent some time learning about political cartoons, as part of our unit of work on persuasive language and techniques. This is a group of fantastic thinkers, many of them with a wicked sense of humour. They have really enjoyed learning how to read critically and form their own perspective and interpretation.
By far, however, the task they enjoyed most was the opportunity to create their own political cartoons. To start off with, we brainstormed some of the issues that we have been looking at recently, or issues that they were interested in. Some of these included:
China, Tibet and the Olympics
Childhood obesity and food advertising
Changes to AFL rules
Whaling
Rights for same-sex couples and their children
Political correctness in childrens’ television programs
I was really impressed with the range of topics that they generated, and as I walked around the room while they were working, I could see that the cartoons they were producing were far exceeding my expectations. Not only in the quality of their drawing, but also the evident understandings that they had about caricature, satire, parody, perspective, juxtaposition, and many of the other concepts that we had discussed.
One student drew a cartoon entitled ‘Childrens’ TV Overboard’, featuring a slowly sinking Tellytubbie, a great pun and showing excellent understanding of the topics that we had discussed in class (including refugee issues); another, entitled ‘Kevin Rudd’s Working Families’, was composed of two panels. The top one showed a row of very suburban houses, with the bottom panel showing a ‘zoomed in’ view inside the homes: a mother channel surfing, a teenager playing Grand Theft Auto on the computer, and dad lying in the hammock in the backyard with a can of beer. I love their thinking!
I’m now looking at suggesting to some students that they might like to ‘publish’ their cartoons, either by hand or by computer. The National Museum of Australia runs an annual competition for primary and secondary students, which I’ll encourage my students to submit an entry for. The NMA website also contains the recently published Reading Between the Lines unit of work, and an Australia Day Flash Interactive activity.
The VCE English Ning is primarily focusing on the Identity and Belonging Context, but I might ask Pennie if it may be used for networking in relation to other Contexts, and/or Outcomes 1 & 3.
A Ning is a customisable social network, and allows users to interact on topics of their own creation.
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 collect images and quotes that express key understandings of landscape; in completing this task, our students were asked to collect these independently and share them with the class. These were collated so that all students had a range of quotations/images to draw upon.
Students may define key terms ‘imaginative’ and ‘landscape’; and form understandings of what they mean together;
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.
No, this is not a post about my latest approch to classroom management, but rather an old idea that was reignited by Dave’s comment, regarding using a flyswat as a classroom ‘prop’ and talking stick during Socratic Cirle discussions (thanks for the info, by the way, Dave)
It got me thinking about flyswats coming up in a discussion I had a while ago, and my consequent *crazy idea* that flyswats could be used as a ‘classroom prop’ in many contexts.
Now that I’ve probably lost all the non-education readers, I’ll elaborate.
The idea was to set up any right answer/wrong answer scenario by doing up slides in PowerPoint, and displaying these with a normal projector. Then students would be divided into groups/teams, and two team members would stand at the front of the room. I then ask/display a question before clicking through the PowerPoint display to project 4 possible answers to that question. Students each hold a flyswat and compete to ’swat’ the correct answer first when it is displayed on the board/wall.
Confused? Well it is difficult to explain. But, for example, you could do it with spelling - just do slides with 4 alternate spellings of the word, and have two students up the front who ‘compete’ to swat the correct (projected) answer first. They could be in teams with audience participation/coaching.
This could be modified for different content simply by changing what is on the slides:
Key dates/years in historical events (When did WW1 start? a) 1913; b) 1914; c) 1653; d) 1918)
Mathematical equations (1+1= a) 2; b)1; c) 42; d)12)
Chemical symbols (I do not have the ability to provide any examples, but you get the gist)
Novel character’s names…
What do I think is good about this activity?
Competitiveness - always gets kids engaged
A ‘test’ that they work towards in their initial inquiry - focusues learning (and allows for me to record formative assessment when they complete the ’swatting’ exercise)
A physical prop - kids love this stuff!
Teamwork
Confidence-building
So whaddya reckon - am I off my rocker? Sure, it could get messy (how to explain to my welfare co-ordinator why two students accidentally ’swatted’ each other…), but I think it could work with the right class. And I would have fun, which is the main thing!
Here is a song from the wonderful Mr Franti, which I like to consider in my approach to the teaching profession:
My best teachers are the ones I’d like to toast My best teachers are the ones I hate the most My best teachers never taught in any schools And my best teachers never told me I was a fool you know They just let me be one, yeah
And I said, Oh my, oh my I ain’t ever seen a place so high Oh why, oh why Must we always say goodbye Tonight, tonight, Someone’s gonna have to learn to cry Oh my, oh my I ain’t never seen a place so I ain’t never seen a place so I ain’t never seen a place so high Never seen a place so high Tonight I’m feeling high
My best teachers said there was no missing link My best teachers often had too much to drink My best teachers never told me what to think My best teachers often brought me to the brink ya know And then let go, then let go
And I said, Oh my, oh my I ain’t ever seen a place so high Oh why, oh why Must we always say goodbye Tonight, tonight, Someone’s gonna have to learn to cry Oh my, oh my I ain’t never seen a place so I ain’t never seen a place so I ain’t never seen a place so high
My best teachers are the ones I’d like to toast My best teachers are the ones I hate the most My best teachers never taught in any school And my best teachers never told me I was a fool you know They just let me be one, yeah
And I said, Oh my, oh my I ain’t ever seen a place so high Oh why, oh why Must we always say goodbye Tonight, tonight, Someone’s gonna have to learn to cry Oh my, oh my I ain’t never seen a place so I ain’t never seen a place so I ain’t never seen a place so high Never seen a place so high Tonight I’m feeling high
education as a cradling of the soul as much as a feeding of the mind (Aitken in Kane, P. The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living. Basingstoke and Oxford: Macmillan, 2004).
Entries (RSS)