Literacy Planning Resource (picture Books)

Introduction

Picture books, considered to be ‘a unique literacy experience’, is perhaps the most recognizable book format in children’s literature (Winch, Johnston, March, Ljungdahl, & Holliday, 2014, p. 589). It represents a world where words are inadequate without pictures and pictures inadequate without words (Paquette, 2007). It embeds literacy skills rather than concepts being taught in isolation. Seplocha & Strasser (2007) note that students are being asked to interpret visual, linguistic, spatial, auditory, gestural semiotic systems as well as evoking an understanding regarding the typography and design of a text.

Taking into account the crucial role of picture books in literacy development “Thelma the Unicorn” by Aaron Blabey is chosen as the text for grade 3 class to produce a sequence of learning activities that target specific outcomes for the student’s literacy learning in line with AusVELS curriculum. It inspires several formats of language including reading, writing, listening, speaking and viewing. It will also lead to culminating a response to text that demonstrates the student’s understanding of the text (AusVELS, 2015).

Rationale for text

The selected text “Thelma the Unicorn” is a picture book by Aaron Blabey that caters for the learning needs of all students. In addition to accommodating students’ differences, capturing their attention, provoking conversation, it allows for students to comprehend how authors make use of written language in order to create entertaining and appealing stories. They learn about conventions such as rhythms of written language while developing skills and dispositions critical for reading and writing.

Moreover, ‘Thelma the Unicorn’ uses pictures to encourage children to use their visual literacy knowledge of story sequence to derive meaning. It reveals the importance of images in stories and how images, vocabulary and language features are used for varied effects. The clever use of picture alongside is not only make the story more appealing moreover proves that a picture paints a thousand words.  

It is a text that can captivate students with its vivid and in-depth story line along with beautiful imagery. Although, with the simplicity of a picture book the text is quite cleverly put together as it caves way for the incorporation of real world issues such shedding light on the lives of glamorous celebrities. It enables students to make connections between text and real world. They are also able to select ideas, events and information in texts that relate to their own lives or others. It encourages the use of semantic awareness and their background knowledge in decoding the text. Students are able to critically engage with the message conveyed by the author in order to comprehend both literal and implied meaning delivered through the text.

It can be used as a model for their own creative writing. The text explores concepts such as personification, type of characters seen in text (static and dynamic) as well as types of conflict (internal and external) that people face in real life such as insecurity, lack of identity, and fame.

Lastly, it includes several crucial language aspects. Students are exposed to a broad range of adjectives, adverbs, nouns, pronouns, compound words and so on. The text contains a range of punctuations conventions, varied sentence structures, that provide additional information, reinstating the student’s known syntactic and grammar abilities while also deriving new knowledge. The text consists of rhyming words and identifying rhyming units can be used to improve student’s phonological awareness. They are also exposed to the use of dialogue further helping their writing skills. It is a great example and a model for students in grade 3 to show how great writers use different elements and aspects of literacy in order to captivate their readers and bring words to life while also incorporating a great moral that targets real world issues (Blabey, 2015).

In several texts, creative writing has been encouraged due to it’s ability to entertain children as well as adults, to explore the functions and values of writing, to search for identity, foster artistic expression, stimulate imagination, clarify thinking, learn to read and write and encourage students to develop their own powers of empathy, expression, and critical thinking (Bower, 2011). The in-text response is therefore to write a story incorporating aspects of literacy attained through the learning sequences. A learning sequence is designed to equip students with understanding of picture books as well as techniques that enables them to develop their own creative stories. In class, the following learning activities and learning outcomes build towards achieving this goal.

Learning activity 1

In order to allow the students to make connections between text and the real world, they will be presented with videos of how celebrities are treated by their fans both positive and negative. Additionally, they will be shown videos of people who are struggling with their self-image. The students are to discuss in groups of four what they observed in the videos and answer the following questions: “Are you satisfied with how you are?”, “Is there anything you want to change about yourself, why or why not?”, “Would you like to live the life of a celebrity, why or why not?”, “State the negative and positive of living a normal life compared to a high profile life”. Following this a shared reading of Thelma will occur, the students are to then draw connections between their own life, the real world and the text as a class. Assessment will take place through observation of how well students are able to make connections between the three areas.

Learning outcome(s) evident

1. Draw connection between the real world to text and text to self.

AusVELS (2015) state that students in grade three should learn to make links between the text and the real world. According to Hill (2012), students gain a deeper understanding of a text when they make authentic connections which makes them more engaged in the reading experience. This activity incorporates listening, viewing and speaking in order to build and use semantic knowledge and experiences to make associations with the text. This also helps students to become better writers as it allows them to understand their ability to use personal or real world experiences to create stories targeting underlying issues they wish to address through their writing (Otto, 2008).