Resource+3

Resource 3 Focus: Written Text For full access to brochure visit link below: []

Description of Resource

The brochure ‘South Australia Kangaroo Island Visitor Guide,’ is found on an internet website called 'South Australia a brilliant blend' []. This website contains brochures of significant sites and landmarks around South Australia, highlighting the main features, regions, things to do and see, specific events to attend, the history of the area and accommodations. It informs both domestic and international visitors about the variety of South Australia and its specific sceneries highlighting the appeal in such an amazing place. The brochure which will be focused on describes and provides information about the features of Kangaroo Island, its coastline, the different wild life animals found around the Island and a map to pinpoint where Kangaroo Island is situated in South Australia. Further on in the brochure other distinct landmarks and sites such as specific National parks (Flinders Chase National Park, Seal Bay Conservation Park Kelly Hill Conservation Park), areas of the coast and heritage sites are spotted out on a map with accompanied descriptions and information about these areas. Relevance to Unit Outcome

This brochure gives students the opportunity to focus on one area of Australia and view the diversity of landmarks and sites found in South Australia alone. In doing so students are then able to gain a greater insight into how diverse other areas of Australia could possibly be. This brochure links to the Stage 2 HSIE outcome **ENS2.5 Describes places in the local area and other parts of Australia and explains their significance** (Board of Studies, 1998, p. 31). It also gives students the opportunity to explore natural, built and historical sites in Australia. More so, this brochure is an effective resource in modeling and exploring factual descriptions and information reports (Board of Studies, 1998, p. 81). It does this as it provides information about South Australia’s landmarks, ranging from its coasts, to its historical sites and it’s National Parks. Following on from the previous lesson which looked at multiple areas found in Australia, this resource provides the opportunity to zoom in and focus on one area of Australia and gain an insight of the specific landmarks and sites that are present. In doing so, students begin to realise the beauty of Australia and the range of built, natural and historically significant sites that are present. Focusing specifically on Kangaroo Island allows students to gain a deeper knowledge of one area that they are not familiar with and prepares them for their final project of creating an information report of different landmarks in Australia. Students also begin to realize and identify particular activities that may associate with particular natural, built and heritage features and places in Aust ralia and are able to begin to compare natural and built features around different parts of Australia and places in their local area. In doing so, students are able to recognize and appreciate the diversity of Australia and how it appeals to people around the world. Aspect of LIteracy Addressed

By focusing on the information provided on Kangaroo Island, this brochure serves as a great resource into looking at factual descriptions and information reports and gives students the opportunity to pinpoint the grammatical features and technical terms found in such texts. It is essential that teachers ensure that students are involved in the curriculum through multiliteracies (Wilde & Marek, 2002, pp. 9). By using this brochure it is guaranteed that students are visually stimulated to be engaged not only in learning about different areas of Australia and meeting the HSIE outcomes, but also students are paying attention to the grammatical features found in writing pieces that supply information. This brochure models how language is used to organise the information and how connections are made across the text (Droga & Humphrey,2003, pp. 85).This will allow students to be introduced to the grammatical features that are found in an information report which include nouns, relating verbs, action verbs, technical terms and the use of paragraphs with topic sentences. Therefore, as seen in the K-6 English modules, teachers are giving students the opportunity to use other texts as models for aspects of writing and engaging students in a whole class activity where the teacher shares examples of texts and demonstrates the features of texts (Board of studies NSW, 2007, pp. 189). In using this resource, students are being prepared to think of the different written and visual features that can be present in an information report. This resource scaffolds students and allows them to recognize the relationship between the visual and written features. Therefore, this resource scaffolds both visual and written literacy through appropriate modeling that presents the language and visual components in an active, social semiotic process (Callow, 2006, pp. 9).  Therefore, students begin to realise how visual literacy allows a deeper interaction with the texts and introduces the notion of thinking analytically about the representation and meaning. Furthermore, students begin to understand that visual elements can be a crucial component of an information report.