Resource+4


 * What can you do.... ** ** by The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority **

Written by Christina Pavlakis [] __** EXPLANATION OF RESOURCE **__ The above resource is a poster provided by the reefED Education site via GBRMPA. As it has been suggested, “Reef Beat is an innovative and curriculum-centred teaching resource that includes activities and challenges that will stimulate inquiring minds to discover all they can about the Reef” (reefED, 2009, para. 1). The educational activities provided by this website assist teachers in raising awareness of the current state of our Great Barrier Reef, and what we can do to ensure its sustainable future. This particular poster has been created as an incentive for the community to make changes as to their treatment of the environment, as well as providing information regarding and promoting the overwhelming impact of climate change on the reef. As reefED suggests, this poster “contributes to the responsible development of active and informed citizens with a better knowledge of the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem and its inhabitants” (2009, para. 2).

__** RELEVANCE TO OUTCOME **__ The Reef Beat poster has undeniable links to the chosen focus HSIE outcome:

**//ENS 2.6 RELATIONSHIPS WITH PLACES//** //-Describes people’s interactions with environments and identifies responsible ways of interacting with environments// As reefED (2009) suggests, this poster “Engages students and empowers them to educate their peers and other members of the broader school community” (para. 2). It is particularly relevant to the subject matter stated in the syllabus in that Stage 2 students in this outcome explore “the management and care of features, sites, places and environments” (NSW BOS, 2007, p. 55). Indeed, this campaign poster aims to promote to students the issues surrounding the implementation of strategies to assist particular features of the environment, and provide reasons as to the importance in doing so.

__** ASPECT OF LITERACY TO BE EXPLORED **__ Whilst the Reef Beat poster is not in its entirety a multimodal text, it is an effective resource which can be utilised in the development of one. Combining both written and visual text, the poster is successful in promoting the importance of maintaining the Great Barrier Reef, and through visual cues and the accompanying information, we as a community feel persuaded to act upon this issue. Whilst the written text plays a vital role in informing the audience of the problems associated with the reef and methods by which this can be solved, the main aspect of literacy to be explored in this resource is its overall visual representation, thus, the way in which the written text is //presented//, not just its content. In terms of analysing the resource, the teacher will alert students to the intentions of the composer and the way in which this has been expressed, visually. Thus, students will explore all three aspects of the image: its representational meanings; that is, the action or conceptual qualities, its interactive meanings; referring to the way in which the text interacts with the audience, whether it instigates a response from them and the effects of angles, colour and modality, and lastly, its compositional meanings; the way in which the image has been composed. In this final compositional aspect students are encouraged to utilise // terminology relevant to visual grammar, such as vectors, reading paths, its layout and salience, as well as the vertical and horizontal placement of images and text and framing etc. //

// (Kress, and Van Leewen, 2006). //