Before reading — assessment for learning

Australian Curriculum: English sub-strand: Literacy – Interpreting, analysing and evaluating

Display covers and some illustrations from Sunday Chutney and The Deep End and ask students to predict whether the books are likely to be fiction or non-fiction.

Introduce visual literacy concepts (such as angles, framing, colour, salience, demand and offer, reading paths, composition, layout) to discuss a selection of images from both books.

Note: If students are not familiar with these concepts and terms,  provide explicit teaching and modeling — introducing several  concepts at a time.

Look at the illustrations in Sunday Chutney. Discuss the ways in which varying emotions are depicted. Draw students’ attention to background objects (symbols of different countries/cities) and the perspectives of the illustrations (scattered pictures can be seen to represent change, elaboration, etc).

Students will: Use illustrations to predict type of book and justify their responses. Discuss images using the vocabulary of visual literacy and the impact of various choices made by illustrators.

Students will use illustrations and information from discussions to answer questions, such as:

• Who is Sunday Chutney?
• Why is she the main character?
• What do you think she is feeling? Why?
• What do you think is happening?

Questions will be used to create a character profile of Sunday Chutney from their predictions and the illustrations only.

Covers and prediction

Australian Curriculum: English sub-strand: Literacy – Creating texts

Give students illustrations from Sunday Chutney without words. Ask students to create texts for each illustration. Use students’ responses to determine the level of literacy support required for the unit.

Discuss with students the illustrations of the places that Sunday lived. Ask students to identify some of the landmarks then create a list and brief description of the different places where Sunday lived, focusing on engaging noun groups and adverbials.

Using the illustrations only from The Deep End, discuss who might be the main character, does he/she look happy, what might he/she be doing?

Students will: Work in small groups to create texts to describe the illustrations; create a PowerPoint or Notebook file about one of the places where Sunday lived; create a postcard for a friend or relative describing their home town or suburb; select one illustration and write about an event it might be depicting.