Activity Examples for Text and Passage Level Analysis

The below activities for text and passage-level analysis are based on the CBCA Award winning information book, Dry to Dry: The Seasons of Kakadu. The full teaching unit by Dr Bronwyn Parkin can be found on the PETAA website for members. 

This book explores the changing seasons of Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory. This book is a wonderful resource for teachers of HASS and Science in the early years to introduce the seasons in the north of Australia. It is also a great resource for the teaching of English, with its parallel descriptions of Kakadu habitat and living things through the seasons: one strand of the text is highly literary, with beautiful descriptions and imagery. The other strand is very concise scientific language. Having these texts alongside each other makes it very easy to point out differences in register and purpose. Even for younger students who are not ready to decode at this level, it is a great book for building both literary and scientific vocabulary.

Selected Focus passages: In many Early Years classrooms, this book will be shared with students as the teacher reads. If appropriate, any page could be selected for close reading. The following pages have been selected because the parallel literary and scientific paragraphs clearly contrast with each other. 

Page 10 is appropriate for Foundation to Year 2. There is not much text, but the language resources are rich, and there is plenty to talk about. Literary: ‘The long-legged jabiru stalks the wetlands ...’; Scientific: ‘About twenty-five frog species live in Kakadu ... fully developed adults.’

Pages 20-21 are appropriate for Years 3–4, with more extended text and more complex grammar. Literary: ‘The plateau's towering cliffs ... into the bushes.’;  Scientific: ‘Kakadu has many waterfalls... keep Kakadu alive during the Dry.’

Text Analysis

• Talk about the purpose of the book: to introduce readers to the seasons in the tropical north of Australia, where there are only two seasons, the Wet and the Dry. If you're already in the tropics, your students will understand this. Otherwise compare the four seasons in your local area with the two commonly recognised seasons in the tropical north. (Great time to link to Geography, Science and Mathematics topics.)
• Explain that the book has two voices: the literary voice that describes what happens in a way that engages our emotions, and makes us feel full of wonder; and the scientific voice that explains in a very factual no nonsense way what is happening during each season.
• It is difficult to classify the text type: the literary text is a recount, in that it describes a series of events which come full circle — from the Dry to the Wet and back to the Dry. However, unlike most recounts, it is not in past tense, but habitual present tense. It is not about events in the past, but events that happen regularly. The text on each page points directly to describe what is happening in the illustrations. The scientific text is in separate pieces of information to elaborate about one aspect of each page.
• Read through the book, drawing attention to the differences in font. The literary voice is in a serif font (curly bits on the ends of letters, which make ‘feet’ that ground letters). It emphasises some words for emotional effect by enlarging them and sometimes placing them on a separate line. In contrast, the scientific voice has a smaller ‘sans serif’ font (no frills). There are no exclamation marks for excitement, and the words of an even size.

On each page, pay close attention to the illustrations.

• Sometimes the word ‘Look!’ invites the reader to look for some tiny creature in the illustrations. On every page, the beautiful descriptions of country and creatures are mirrored and elaborated in the illustrations. 
  Look closely for evidence of humans and human habitation in the illustrations. We learn from this about Indigenous and non-Indigenous habitation of various types, but they are not foregrounded. They are transient, like cars, or faded out in the background. 
• Study the interrelationship of living things: how they interact, what parts of the landscape they occupy.
• Look for the tiny details of activity hidden right across the page, above and below water, and in the air.  
• Enjoy the beautiful and contrasting colours of the Dry (for example, pages 12–13) and the Wet (for example, pages 14–15), and the country after the rains have finished (for example, pages 22–23). (Liz Anelli has provided two black-line masters which you could use as follow up, enabling students to focus on the colours of the Billabong in the Dry and the Stormy Sky) 

Draw attention to, and read:

• The scientific addenda at the end of the book: the section headed ‘About Kakadu' which is factual and not literary, and provides a contrasting Indigenous perspective on seasons: the Bininj and Mungguy people in Kakadu in fact observe six seasons: much more nuanced than simply Wet and Dry. The Indigenous names for the six seasons and their page references are included on page 29.
• The map of Kakadu that follows. Combine this with a lesson that shows Australia, and where this map is situated. 
• The Index: explain that people use the index to find things that they are especially interested in. 

Passage-Level Analysis
Page 10 Literary voice

Display the selected passage in a way that you can underline it, either by writing it out, or by displaying on an interactive white board.

• Using text marking, explain and group meaning clusters that build imagery: the noun groups The long-legged jabiru, the wetlands; the circumstances and phrases back, to its babies, in a huge old nest, high up, in a banyan tree; the careful choice of verb stalks.
• Explain that ‘seeking out' with the ‘-ing’ ending means that this action is happening at the same time as the stalking.  
• After text marking, choral reading to build fluency and prosody, and just to enjoy the beautiful words.
• Oral cloze: write out the sentence with some words missing, and students read along to fill them in. (Vocabulary development.)

Page 10 Scientific voice

Using text marking, explain and group meaning clusters that describe things and actions very precisely:
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• The noun groups: About twenty-five frog species (about added to make it true), an important source of food for many creatures, including birds, snakes, fish and turtles (including added to provide some but not all examples), fully developed adults (with the adverb ‘fully’ added to emphasise size).
• Pronoun ‘they’: the first one refers back to 'frog species': using a pronoun helps to make the sentence stick together (cohesion). The second one refers immediately back to 'birds, snakes, fish and turtles’. In this case it makes those two sentences belong to each other. The third ‘they’ refers immediately back to ‘frogs’. It is important to explain these references, because they are likely to cause confusion.
• The final sentence includes ‘they all’, (as compared to, about 25 frog groups), with ‘all’ added to make it true. This sentence is qualified further with a dependent clause of condition: either ... or. This extra clause elaborates with important information about the size of frogs when they are eaten.

Page 20 Literary voice

Using text marking, highlight the language resources:

• The noun groups to build imagery: The plateau’s towering cliffs, thunderous waterfalls, the chorus of frogs.
• The noun groups that carefully describe the abundance of creatures that can be observed interacting with each other: the brush-tail tuan, centipedes, Goannas and snakes, a water python, a dusky rat, a king brown snake.    
• The warning Look out! Is this directed at the reader or the animals or both?
• The phrases which elaborate on the circumstances, mostly 'where' around the interactions: in the paperbarks, away from the floods, Below, into the bushes. 
• The careful choices of verbs to describe actions appropriate to each creatures: hunts, running away, climbed, catches, slithers.

Page 20 Scientific voice

Using text marking, explain and group meaning clusters that describe things and actions very precisely, and compare these word choices with those in the previous literary paragraph:

• The noun groups which are very objective and sparse: many waterfalls, some, the wet season, the deep waterholes.  
• Ellipsis, meaning, words left out when there is no chance of confusion: some [waterfalls] flow all year round, others [waterfalls] only during the wet season. This is also common in scientific writing, that likes to be succinct, and not waste unnecessary words. Compare this with the abundance of descriptive vocabulary in the literary paragraph.
• One noun group is very complicated, and is a great example of how scientists pack lots of meaning into a small number of words: the force of these waterfalls that has slowly eroded the deep waterholes that keep Kakadu alive during the Dry. ‘Force’ is the ‘thing’ or the base word, so that is the focus, the strength, not the beauty. It is a nominalisation, that is, a verb turned into a noun. That is an important feature of scientific writing. Before ‘force’ we only have the pointer or determiner ‘the’. After ‘force’ come many qualifying phrases and clauses:‘ ... of these waterfalls', ‘that has slowly eroded the deep waterfalls'. Hidden inside this big noun group is another noun group: ‘... the deep waterholes that keep Kakadu alive during the Dry’.
• We have to infer from this last sentence that, over a long timescale, the rain from the Wet creates waterfalls, that, although they dry up during the Dry, make waterholes that are so deep that they keep animals alive, even when it doesn’t rain.