Year 11 English as an Additional Language - Unit 2: Perspectives in texts
Representations of Australian Identities
This term, our Year 11 EAL students have been immersed in Indigenous perspectives through the Australian play Murras by Eva Johnson. As part of this journey, we’ve been exploring how cultural assumptions, attitudes, values, and beliefs are communicated in the text — and putting explicit reading strategies into action! To help students connect with the characters and themes in a meaningful way, we used a text colour-coding strategy to highlight the key issues which characters communicate to the audience. These activities culminated in group work using yarning circles, where students collaboratively created character profiles from the play. The activity encouraged creativity, teamwork, and thoughtful discussion — and the results were truly impressive!
We’re also lucky to be currently working with Ms. Ngoc Phan, a talented artist who has held a long term connection with Yeronga through the Y-Connect program. She’s been assisting students through workshops in class to build their confidence, as they prepare to perform their own imaginative monologues based on characters from the play Murras. We are looking forward to viewing what the students create!
There’s more to come — stay tuned!
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Ellie Lundin - English, EAL/D and Humanities Teacher |