Resource+1

The Great Barrier Reef Book, by Dr Mark Normann

Written by Zena Jade Etri

__** Explanation of the resource: **__

The Great barrier Reef Book introduces many of the animals and plants home to one of the seven wonders of the natural world. The illustrations are mostly photos and text boxes, which provide general/factual information. The book is not intended to expose everything about the unit, but instead offer succinct, factual blurbs to spark the students’ curiosity. Information is also explicit, whilst still accessible to the targeted stage (Saxby, 2009, para.4). The inclusion of a content page, index and glossary all offer invaluable navigational tools to assist with the class discovery (Saxby, 2009, para.4). The book also contains extra information including a guide to the food and predator of animals featured, and a diagrammatic guide relating the size of the marine organisms to the size of humans (Saxby, 2009, para.4).

__** Relevance to the outcome: **__

As the outcome of this unit deals with The Great Barrier Reef and the effects of pollution, this book serves as an engaging tool in the first lesson. This is achieved by offering interesting facts, and basic information about marine life. This will prove to be an effective stimulus when introducing The Great Barrier Reef. It will also support the development of a factual description based on a marine animal or plant of interest.

__** Aspect of Literacy suitable to be explored: **__

The book is a great resource for engaging students whilst using it to explore factual descriptions. The bulk of the text is information based, adhering to the grammatical features of a factual description e.g. particular nouns, adverbials, noun groups etc (Droga & Humphrey, 2010, pp. 133-134). It delivers upon the most important facts about each marine organism. Effectively supplying students with the initial research required to begin a factual description on a particular animal or plant. Students would be required to develop the information learned (or researched) and present it in the correct structural orientation. It is important to address written structural and grammatical features of a factual description, as this particular text type, just like outcomes, builds up a student’s ability of opinion based writing (Droga & Humphrey, 2010, p.10).

The high density of imagery complements each extract of information, located within the text, “communicating the essential information about the topic” (Gunther & Leewen, 2006, p.34). In addition the contact made through the images infers high demand, and therefore creates a more personal relationship with the reader (Unsworth, 2001, pp.96-97).This means that this book may also be effectively used in the following lessons on the visual grammar of the multimodal text. The high modality images not only focus on the marine life and scenery within The Great Barrier Reef, but also include topographic, satellite images of the location (Unsworth, 2001, pp. 99-101). A central element, as the unit not only explores the effects pollution is having on marine life, but also on the beauty of one of the seven wonders of the natural world.

This book is consequently a fundamental resource for provoking an interest, each student acquires, in the marine life, familiar to The Great Barrier Reef. The book also supports four elements of effective comprehension strategies, including; reading, clarifying, questioning and summarising. Whilst also providing an array of information that could be accessed independently, or in the case through modeled reading. In turn they are meeting the required outcome, by exploring complimentary information to the unit, applying new and innovative information to support fundamental literacy skills.

__ References: __

Droga, L., & Humphrey, S. (2010). Grammar and meaning: //an introduction for primary teacher//s. Berry: Target Texts.

Gunther, K., & Leeuwen, T, V. (2006). //Reading images: the grammar of visual design 2nd edition//. New York: Routledge.

Normann, M. (2009). The great barrier reef book: solar powered. Australia: Black Dog Books

Saxby, C. (2009). The great barrier reef, children's book review. last accessed 2nd October, 2010 from http://www.aussiereviews.com/article2884.html.

Unsworth, L. (2001). //Teaching multiliteracies across the curriculum//: //changing contexts of text and image in classroom practice//. Buckingham, England: Open University. Chapter 3- Describing visual literacies.