SAMPLE UNIT

Exploring colonisation through The Rabbits

designed for AusVELS level 5 students

About The Rabbits

An allegorical fable about colonisation, The Rabbits tells the story of the colonised. An unseen narrator describes the coming of rabbits, an encounter that is at first friendly and curious, but later darkens as it becomes apparent that the visitors are actually invaders. The style of the book is deliberately sparse and strange, with both text and images conveying an overall sense of bewilderment and anxiety as the native creatures witness environmental devastation under the wheels of a strange new culture.

(Tan, n.d.)

Description

The ideas for this unit supplement the collaborative meaning making experiences detailed in Reciprocal Teaching and build on our interactive learning activities in a more socially connected and integrated manner.

Our choice to explore Marsden and Tan's The Rabbits (1998) was based on the premise that quality literature can be an effective tool to highlight the synergistic relationship between textual features and the broader sociocultural context in reading comprehension (Winch et al., 2011).

You may adapt and develop these learning experiences to suit the culturally and linguistically diverse needs of your students.

You may like to use Bloom's Revised Taxonomy and/or the Gradual Release of Responsibility framework to support your students' understandings and differentiate your instruction and assessment accordingly.

There is no set timeframe for these learning experiences; your lesson structure should be adapted to suit your students and will depend on your assessment of their achievement and engagement.

Curriculum links

This following learning experiences connect to the following AusVELS curriculum areas and cross-curriculum priorities:

In addition, our unit also relates to International Baccalaureate PYP goal of developing international-mindedness.

Teacher responsibility

Student responsibility

Gradual Release of Responsibility

Adapted from Miller (2013)

Learning outcomes

While engaging in the following learning experiences, your students will:

Effectively employ a range of reading comprehension strategies, including critical thinking skills, to analyse textual information (ACELY1703);
Recognise that ideas in the text are informed by the creator's sociocultural background, and that different stories would be presented if conveyed from a different viewpoint (ACELT1610);
Critically consider the nature of colonisation and its impact on Australia's First Peoples by forging text-to-text and text-to-world connections (ACHHK094).

Bloom's Revised Taxonomy

Adapted from Winch et al. (2011)

Learning experience one

Developing understanding through reading comprehension

Display images from The Rabbits and ask students to predict what they think the text is about and share their ideas. Pose critical questions such as:
- What is happening?
- What does it look like?
- How do the colours impact the scene?
- Who/what is represented?
Informally note students' justifications: have they activated prior knowledge? Drawn on the visual text?
Shared reading of text, consciously modelling comprehension strategies employed aloud with students.
In small, collaborative expert groups, students undertake detailed study of a specific comprehension strategy to deploy when analysing The Rabbits. Students may select their own groups if they are self-managers, otherwise they will be placed in pre-arranged groups based on need and previous learning data.
Each group works on an activity that pertains to their focus strategy. For example, students working on inferring will use the T Chart (below) to compare literal and inferred textual information to enable deeper understandings of the text. Similarly, students working on summarising will use the Story Map (below) to improve overall textual comprehension.
Run a catch-and-release group for students who need explicit or guided instruction or, if behaviour/time permits, individual conferences with students.
Complete session with a Gallery Walk to demonstrate other groups' works and reread text, explicitly modelling strategies, to synthesise information.

Sample inferring activity

Sample summarising activity

Learning experience three

Making connections and synthesising understandings

Encourage student-lead inquiries into colonisation in international contexts and compare/contrast with The Rabbits and the broader Australian context.
For example, some students may investigate Native Americans' history of colonisation and displacement.
Students should use both fiction and non-fiction texts, and evaluate strategies employed by authors, illustrators and creators. For example, students investigating America's history of colonisation might like to examine the music video Colours of the Wind from Disney's Pocahontas (below).
Students should aim to make connections between sociocultural representations and historical events, but also consider which comprehension strategies they are employing when analysing their chosen text. Students should also consider how the medium affects which strategies to deploy.
Once again, work with students that require assistance and continue to monitor students' developing understandings.

Sample music clip from a fiction text

Assessing students' learning

Throughout this unit students are required to keep an ongoing blog/digital portfolio detailing their goals, learning experiences and self, peer and teacher assessments. Platforms to host their blogs include wix, weebly, webs and wordpress.

The benefits for using blogs as both a formative and summative measure of assessment are manifold. Students' thinking is visible, learning goals are clear and easily monitored and students can take on a more agentive role in their learning assessment.

In addition, learning goals and achievements should be monitored, scaffolded and negotiated with students. Photographic and anecdotal evidence will form the basis for additional assessments.

Learning experience two

Applying understandings to the broader socio-historical context

Revisit text and explain objective to enhance cognitive comprehension strategies and textual understandings by relating The Rabbits to the broader socio-historical context.
Facilitate connections by exploring print, digital and media texts accounts of colonisation (for example, newspapers, music, film excerpts, data reports, news reports, personal anecdotes, etc.) in a bus-stop activity. Students record ideas in ongoing blogs/digital portfolios and share with group.
In small groups, students work on developing their critiquing/critical thinking skills by considering the politics of representation. For example, question stories of invasion, colonisation and settlement. Discuss who is being silenced by certain terms/stories.
Compare/contrast representations from bus-stop activity with the portrayal of Indigenous Australians in The Rabbits. As a class, debate the merit of The Rabbits. Consider how the story would be different if written and illustrated by an Indigenous Australian.
Ultimately, this learning experience should assist readers' comprehension of authorial voice, views and values; how texts act as interactive social agents; and the notion that there are as many meanings as there are readers (Winch et al., 2011).

Sample music clip demonstrating an alternative representation of Indigeneity

Learning experience four

Collaborating, creating and sharing

Based on their learning experiences, ongoing self-assessments in their blogs and student-teacher conferences, students independently create a digital story that synthesises their developing understanding of colonisation as a social, historical and political event. Students may choose to recreate The Rabbits from a different perspective or different time frame (e.g. pre-colonisation, in the future, etc.).
Students share their stories with their classroom and school community (either at an exhibition or in a digital learning space).
Students critique and analyse their peers' work, noting which comprehension strategies they used to derive meaning.
As students actively contribute to their peers' storymaking, the multimodal and dynamic nature of reading and creating texts is reinforced.