Next Lesson: Sunday 28 June at 2.30 – 3.30 pm.
Well done to all of you for a difficult term on Zoom; we have been moving at a fast pace. Here’s a summary of the tasks we are working on:
Text analysis, creative writing, and comprehension. Please see the excerpt attached on Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens. Please read the passage several times:
- note down a range of narrative devices.
- write a paragraph based on Scrooge’s transformation. Include quotes.
- using Scrooge’s and Fred’s conversation as a model, write your own conversation using at least 3-4 similar features. Make sure you capture the character’s mindset through tone, register and symbols.
Persuasive writing: comprehension; formal writing and grammar.
- Please read the range of letters and views on statues and their removal. (The same is similar for films and comedy skits etc.)
- Should we remove statues? This is a nuanced topic, and we are working on capturing some of the complexities of the debate.
Main contention – getting rid of the statues is a simplified solution to a complex and difficult problem. Rather it is better to understand the problematic world views, prevailing attitudes of the time and some of the good they may have done. It is better to take a more nuanced approach to a difficult problem.
Sample main contention? Government officials should not remove statues but place them in a museum so that future generations can remember the mistakes of the past.
- Plainly wiping out all statues is not a rational and efficient solution; there are complex factors and complicated opinions that should be unravelled rather than destroyed.
- See: “Toppling statues challenges history” (Comment, The Age, 13/6, Julia Baird, non-Indigenous TV presenter and historian), and “Toppling statues a ‘hollow victory”‘ (News, The Age, 13/6, Lidia Thorpe, Gunai-Gunditjmara woman and Indigenous social activist).
- Based on a range of letters from The Age (via email)
Grammar – use of nominals; subject-verb agreements; pronoun agreements; control of parts of speech in a sentence; passive and active voice; finite and non-finite verbs and use of adverbial clauses.
Very advanced comprehension: reading and analysing some poems. (The Small Celandine and I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: William Wordsworth)
