Specific Learning Focus
Analyse and explain how language features and vocabulary are used by different authors to represent ideas, characters and events.
Learning Intentions
- Analyse and explain how language features and vocabulary are used by different authors to represent ideas, characters and events
- Understand how language patterns can be used for emphasis
Content Descriptions
- Understand how authors often innovate on text structures and play with language features to achieve particular aesthetic, humorous and persuasive purposes and effects
- Understand how ideas can be expanded and sharpened through careful choice of verbs, elaborated tenses and a range of adverb groups/phrases
- Investigate how vocabulary choices, including evaluative language can express shades of meaning, feeling and opinion
Success Criteria
- Create images from language patterns that describe characters and events
- Name the parts of the language features and vocabulary in the patterns
- Identify verbs, adverb groups and adjectives in language patterns
- Use the patterns of language to create new text
- Change the vocabulary in a text to create a different effect
Introduction
Preparing Before Reading – The Key to Rondo, Emily Rodda – pp. 21-22
- This part of the story occurs when Leo is still investigating the box – he’s sitting in his room, his father is away and his mother is out. Mimi is in her rooms so Leo has time to sit and look at all the pictures on the surface of the box.
- In this part he is looking closely at the side of the box with the forest and he realises that there is more detail here that he’d previously noticed. The forest is only on the lower half of the painted scene – there’s much more above it.
Modelling and Sharing
Learning Intention
- Analyse and explain how language features and vocabulary are used by different authors to represent ideas, characters and events
Success Criteria
- Create images from language patterns that describe characters and events
- Name the parts of the language features and vocabulary in the patterns
Text Segment
Above it was a brown road, thin as string, running from the front of the box to the back, where it ended at a little bridge. On the other side of the road was a winding river, surrounded at first by farms and tiny villages, then, closer to the bridge, by scattered groves of trees.
Teacher
- Identify the messages of the sentences: What is happening and who or what is taking part?
Above (the forest) was a road.
A river was on the other side.
- Highlight the language features that describe the road and talk about the function of the words, e.g. “brown” describes the river, “thin as string” is a describer that comes after the noun it describes (how else could it have been written – the thin brown river), “running from the front of the box to the back” describes where the river is, so that’s an adverbial clause, “where it ended at a little bridge” describes what happened to the river at the back of the box.
While the teacher is modelling, the students will copy the highlighting and labelling – begin to ask for responses from students – stating the function (where, how)
Noun groups (with describers) – it, a brown road, thin as string, it, a winding river
Verbs – was, running, ended, was, surrounded
Adverbial phrases/circumstances (how, where) – Above, from the front of the box to the back, at a little bridge, On the other side of the road, at first, by farms and tiny villages, closer to the bridge, by scattered groves of trees
Draw an image that matches the text to show how the words create an image.
Sharing and Guiding in groups with teachers
Learning Intention
- Analyse and explain how language features and vocabulary are used by different authors to represent ideas, characters and events
Success Criteria
- Create images from language patterns that describe characters and events
- Name the parts of the language features and vocabulary in the patterns
Text Segment
It had a thatched roof, and red roses grew around its green-painted door. At the side, in the shade of an old apple tree, a young woman in a red dress sat on a tartan rug, playing with a black-haired baby.
Teacher and students together
- Identify the messages of the sentences: What is happening and who or what is taking part?
It had a thatched roof and roses grew around its door. (The rest of the sentence adds detail to the descriptions.)
A woman sat, playing with a baby.
Teacher and students together
The goal is to get the students to contribute as much as possible to the identification of these elements of the text. The main idea to focus on is the talk around the function of these language elements in building a description that creates an impression of this scene – what is happening and what impression does that give the reader.
- Highlight the language features that describe the scene and talk about the function of the words, e.g. “around its green-painted door” describes where the roses grew and adds detail about the door, “At the side, in the shade of an old apple tree” describes where the woman is sitting and gives the description in two parts, being very specific.
- The scene is very clearly described for the reader – easy to visualise
Noun groups (with describers) – it, a thatched roof, red roses, a young woman in a red dress
Verbs – had, grew, sat, playing
Adverbial phrases/circumstances (how, where) – around its green-painted door, At the side, in the shade of an old apple tree, on a tartan rug, with a black-haired baby
Draw an image that matches the text to show how the words create an image.