Lesson+Overview

The focus of this lesson is to introduce students to the concept that people have a special relationship with place, and that different people will value places for different reasons. For this lesson, students are asked to bring in a picture or photo of a place that is special to them, and explain to the class why they value this place and think it is special. Then, using the Australian Heritage website __ http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage __ students are given an opportunity to explore different heritage sites around Australia and discover why they are so important.
 * __ Lesson 1: __**

After building the field of knowledge, this lesson introduces the topical issue of whether or not tourists should be allowed to climb Uluru and provides the basis for a semi structured debate which allows students to evaluate the varying oppinions on the subject. Students will watch the ABC’s Behind The News “Uluru Uproar” story and this will provide the stimulus for discussion. In groups, students adopt a point of view for the discussion, e.g. Aboriginal Elder, Tour Guide, Tourist etc and then present their argument to the group. Students are given a chance to respond and engage in debate. (See Complete Lesson Plan)
 * __ Lesson 2: __**

In this lesson, students will be placed into teams for completing the rich multimodal task. There will be four groups and each group will receive a topic out of: Mining in Jabiluka, Overfishing, Wind Farming, and Saving Ningaloo Reef, as well as an accompanying information pack containing information about the issues including: who are the stakeholders? what are their views? a history of the issue and environmental implications etc. This information will be highly scaffolded and presented in such a way that students will be easily able to access and understand. Students in their groups will be required to familiarise themselves with the material, and produce a discussion presenting the different sides of the argument for their given topic.
 * __ Lesson 3: __**

**__ Lesson 4 __**** : ** Building on the verbal discussion featured in Lesson 2 and linking to the discussions students have written in lesson 3, this lesson explores the range of modality used in the discussion text type. Students complete activities which assist them in gaining an understanding of how modal verbs convey the writer’s orientation towards possibility, probability and certainty. Following this, students participate in activities which explore how modal clauses/phrases express a person’s strong, weak, or medium position on an issue. Students analyse a discussion on whether or not tourists should be allowed to climb Uluru, which allows them to assess the range of modality used and also continues their learning about people and their interactions with environments. (See Complete Lesson Plan).

In order to begin providing students with the means to complete their rich task, this lesson introduces students to visual literacy by examining visual texts taken from environmental and activist websites that are directly related to the topics that they have been given in their groups ( Mining in Jabiluka, Overfishing, Wind Farming, and Saving Ningaloo Reef). Students explore the visual techniques (representational, interactive and compositional) that are used to create meaning and show their relationship to the environment or special place. Students are then given an opportunity to create their own visual texts in groups which can be used in their rich task. (See Complete Lesson Plan)
 * __Lesson 5: __**

This lesson introduces students to multimodal texts and gives students an opportunity to understand how modes can work together to achieve an overall meaning. Students watch an Indigenous Dreamtime story with a combination of image and sound, image only and sound only and discuss how this affected meaning and understanding. Students then observe how meaning can be changed by varying one or more of the modes and have an opportunity to give two identical pictures different meanings by varying accompanying text. These pictures are taken from their topics from the rich task and can be utilised in the completion of their task. (See Complete Lesson Plan)
 * __ Lesson 6: __**

Building on the previous multimodal lesson, students will be given more of an opportunity to consolidate their understanding by analysing an ABC News story on Uluru and understanding how the modes work together to create meaning. As the rich task is to create a short news story, this provides some concrete scaffolding for students on an already familiar topic. Students are then provided further scaffolding for the rich task by completing a graphical organiser to structure their information and completing a story board template for their story. Group roles are also allocated. (See Complete Lesson Plan)
 * __ Lesson 7: __**

Following on directly from the last activity in Lesson 7, students will now begin to write their script for their news story based on the information they have gathered so far in the preceding lessons about their given topic. The roles of news reader and interviewees will be scripted and rehearsed in this lesson, and other group members will be deciding which visual images will accompany the script using what they have learnt about visual literacy and multimodality so far.
 * __ Lesson 8: __**

This lesson is where students will have an opportunity to begin filming their news stories. It is anticipated that this will take a whole lesson as it will require rehersals and coordination of all group members. Students will be scaffolded along the way and encouraged to think about the visual grammar of their news story and how they are utilising multimodality to convey their message. **__ Lesson 10: __** During this lesson students will finish any additional filming and then begin to edit their story and make any final changes. Students have been given the option of making their own music for the news story using percussive instruments so these recordings can be made and added to their final product during this lesson also.
 * __ Lesson 9: __**