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Education Resource Introduction

Through the document you will see icons indicating student activities. Some of these are class activities, group activities or individual activities.

Overview of the resource

This resource takes a contemporary text dealing with popular culture and considers how it may be used in a senior English curriculum, a Music curriculum and explores opportunities for cross curriculum study between the two disciplines.

Song lyrics and documentaries have been a part of the English curriculum for many years. This resource allows teachers to consider them together through the film PAUL KELLY — STORIES OF ME to examine with their students how people are represented in texts and how stories are told.

The resource has been prepared for teachers and written for students. It broadly deals with four ideas that are common to Australian senior curricula

• a representation of an artist and celebrity
• a representation of an Australian voice
• how stylistic choices express ideas and reveal attitudes, values and perspectives
• how we respond to and evaluate an artist’s work and its cultural significance.

The resource is made up of a series of sequenced activities that reflect a range of approaches to English and that can be included into a variety of teaching programs. Students engage in close study of text, wide reading, listening and viewing and creation of written texts in various forms and the creation of texts in different modes and media. Activities in the resource may be given directly to students.

The resource is designed for the senior years of English and Music.

English Curriculum

This resource has been written to address the Aims and Content Descriptors of the Australian Curriculum: English. While activities in this resource are suitable for use across years 11 and 12, it coincides most closely to learning activities required for the content in Unit 2 of the Senior English course

In Unit 2, students analyse the representation of ideas, attitudes and voices in texts to consider how texts represent the world and human experience. Analysis of how language and structural choices shape perspectives in and for a range of contexts is central to this unit. By responding to and creating texts in different modes and mediums, students consider the interplay of imaginative, interpretive and persuasive elements in a range of texts and present their own analyses.

Students examine the effect of stylistic choices and the ways in which these choices position audiences for particular purposes, revealing attitudes, values and perspectives. Through the creation of their own texts, students are encouraged to reflect on their language choices and consider why they have represented ideas in particular ways.

Unit 2 develops student knowledge and understanding of the ways literary texts connect with each other. Drawing on a range of language and literary experiences, students consider the relationships between texts, genres, authors, audiences and contexts. Ideas, language and structure of different texts are compared and contrasted. Connections between texts are established by analysing their similarities and differences, for example, through intertextuality and other patterns and allusions evident in ideas, language used and forms of texts. Students create analytical responses that are evidence-based and convincing. By experimenting with text structures and language features, students understand how imaginative texts are informed by analytical responses.

Completion of this resource may be used to achieve the following outcomes:

By the end of this unit, students:

• understand the ways in which ideas and attitudes are represented in texts
• examine the ways texts are constructed to influence responses
• create oral, written and multimodal texts that experiment with text structures and language features for particular audiences, purposes and contexts.

Music Curriculum

Although the current draft of the Arts Curriculum is still in review and consultation, there is a strong focus upon the use of Australian Music across all component areas. Because of this current status of the Arts Curriculum, these activities are aligned with the Senior Courses that are currently available for study in High School. Most closely referenced is the Music 1 Course in the NSW Stage 6 syllabus, where ‘Stories of Me’ could easily fit into a multitude of topic areas including:

• Australian Music
• Popular Music
• Rock Music and
• Music of the 20^th and 21^st Centuries

Using the learning experiences of Listening, Performing and Composing, these activities have been designed to link with both the study of the music while also having clear links to the English Syllabus, particularly through the study of the lyrics and writing of Paul Kelly.

In the Music 2 Syllabus ‘Stories of Me’ could be studied within the context of Australian Music, examining popular composers and performers.

The series of activities explores the key musical dimensions of Paul Kelly’s compositions, unpacking various devices, techniques and approaches, while also developing an ongoing awareness of his work through aural analysis and discussion. It is hoped that this resource will encourage students in their composition, performance and musicology study, providing them with a clear context through which to explore the music of Paul Kelly in a number of ways.

Using the learning experiences of Listening, Performing and Composing, these activities have been designed to link with both the study of the music while also having clear links to the English Syllabus, particularly through the study of the lyrics and writing of Paul Kelly.

How to use it

The resource is structured to enable “cherry-picking” of elements suitable to particular students. Some suggested approaches to the material are below.

English

The resource is made up of a series of sequenced activities that can be taught:

• as an entire unit: Portraying the Artist in an exploration of the nature and processes of representation
• through selecting and compiling sections to form the basis of units based on other texts such as:
  • a documentary study
  • biography and narrative
  • an Australian voice?
  • characterisation
• by choosing smaller sections to incorporate as extensions or points of comparison for other units such as:
  • identity and a sense of self
  • construction of celebrity
  • perspective and opinion
  • intertextuality: theft or creativity?
  • reading critically
  • cultural value
  • poetry (lyric and ballad)
• by focusing on particular songs for enriching work on texts
  • about place
  • for social action
  • that explore relationships.

Each section of the resource is headed by introductory remarks which contextualise the learning within a broad understanding of the discipline of English and with the list of content descriptors addressed by the subsequent activities. Activities in the resource may be given directly to students.

This resource provides the teacher with:

• A range of approaches that allows for choice to meet the needs of your own students
• Varied student activities with built-in pedagogy.

You can refer to the National Portrait Gallery exhibition PAUL KELLY & THE PORTAITS here.