Resources, Activities and Strategies for The Final Quarter

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Let’s build upon our previous blog post utilising Ian Darling’s The Final Quarter documentary in your classroom. For Year 10 students, this valuable resource can connect them with modern Australian society whilst sparking engagement of crucial literary skills. With a focus on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People’s perspective, it will be important to incorporate a warning for any Indigenous student in the room. This can be simply having a conversation at the beginning of the lesson that the content may be triggering and the video contains the voices/images of deceased First Nations People. Group work and reflection will be a key component in teaching this documentary, as the themes can be difficult to interpret individually. 

Resource 1: Film Worksheet

The first resource available is a film comprehension worksheet, a 4-page document that should be printed on 2-pages double-sided. This comprehension worksheet is an effective tool for students to deepen their understanding of the film, providing them with detailed information, events and quotes that they will use in later activities. The use of timestamps on the majority of the questions allows students who may be slower at processing information the ability to go back and find the information at a later date.  Answer worksheet available HERE.



Resource 1: Analysis

While viewing the documentary, students will see how the different media platforms portrayed Adam Goodes. Some media outlets were supportive, while others were dismissive and divisive. When engaging with the text, students can analyse how language is constructed through stories to manipulate public opinion. (EN5-URB-01) This manipulation will drive public behaviour, resulting in the adamant ‘booing’ and jeers from the AFL spectators onto Adam Goodes. Using the worksheet, students will be able to determine how stories are framed in the media, this analysis will assist them in navigating modern society. Through the use of multi-modal content, and a combination of visual and auditory elements that assists disengaged students struggling with written texts (Dutton and Manuel, 2019) content understanding will become accessible.

Strategies

As this documentary can be deeply impactful, a variety of strategies can be employed to assist the smooth operation of the lesson. Prior to watching the film, an effective way to begin the lesson would be to incorporate familiar content and students’ schemas (Staley and Freeman, 2017). This could look like asking the class what their favourite sport is or which public sports figures they admire. This group discussion allows the classroom to become relaxed and those disengaged learners may start to become interested with the topic as they can identify the relevance of the documentary to their own lives and experiences. However, sometimes one can receive a class who are not interested in sports or refuse to identify public figures they admire. It would be helpful to take the approach of the importance of treating people equally and standing up for what you believe in. Highlighting that Adam Goodes received the Australian of the Year Award in 2014 by Prime Minister Tony Abbott may be a way to engage those learners who state they simply ‘don’t care about footy’. Until the next blog, where we will unpack a second resource, looking at the impact of group work, discussions and reflections. 

References

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