Text-user

A valuable resource provided by Linda Willis and Narelle Daffurn that provides all data that relates to how the student is able to use the different texts. Its a resource that is to be always considered in the selection of different texts for the class where it provides a range of questions that a text-user asks relating to both written and visual texts.

The activity is an introduction to another subject learning in the upper Year levels (Year 3+) for example, Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS). It involves students providing a recount as to the events that occurred in the text requiring them to draw from their prior knowledge and learning. The two separate sheets will assist both the emergent and fluent writers/readers. The initial part of the activity will be discussed in front with the class as its focus will be created to invoke their initial thoughts about what history was like using the terms associated with it e.g. civil rights (My Dream of Martin Luther King) or knowing that success has a beginning (The Dot). The language that the authors use will initiate a certain feeling for us as the reader.

Within the activities they will allow students to recall on what actions that occurred throughout the text. For the more fluent readers/writers, they may go a little further in describing the emotions that Martin Luther King or Vashti would have been feeling in that particular situation and moment. For the more fluent readers/writers, they may go a little further in describing the emotions that Martin Luther King or Vashti would have been feeling in that particular situation and moment as they “make connections between the ways different authors may represent similar storylines, ideas and relationships ” (ACELT1602).

As students finally have a grasp of the text and the message that was being depicted by the author, they may summarise their work in writing their own ‘I have a dream’ speech that portrays what they would like to see.

Haiku can be considered for students to bring forward their own thinking as it relates to a text that they are reading. Due to its format the students will thinking at a deeper level concerning the characters, events or scenarios that they are reading about.