Reading and Responding (NO SUGAR)

Year 12 ~ 2016

Reading and Responding (NO SUGAR)

HOLIDAY HOMEWORK –

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT TASK 1a

In order to get an S for Unit 3 English, all tasks and questions in this booklet must be completed.

The work in this booklet is to be submitted to your English teacher on your first English lesson of Term 1 2016.

The requirements for Reading and Responding are shown below:

Critically analyse texts and the ways in which authors construct meaning:

§ Much of the ‘meaning’ in a novel/play comes instinctively to readers. Why is it that we can separate the protagonist from antagonist? Why is it that we know whether or not the author supports or denounces an idea? Why can we distinguish a setting in the 17th century compared with 20th century? This all comes fromwhatdesign features the author used in their text. Here you need to start looking at point of view, symbolism, imagery and more. Back to the examples, we can identify the antagonist through the use of negative words used to describe them, we know if the author supports an idea if they represent it with hope and positivity and we know that in 17th century they used words like thou and thee, compared to 21th century slang, ‘what’s up?’. All these features are important in developing a novel or play because it helps to send a particular message across to readers or audience.

Analyse the social, historical and/or cultural values embodied in texts:

§ Society, history and culture all shape and influence us in our beliefs and opinions. Writers use much of what they have obtained from the world around them and employ this knowledge in their writing. Understanding their values embodied in texts can help us as readers, identify and appreciate theme and character representations.

Discuss and compare possible interpretations of texts using evidence from the text:

§ Be open to the idea that many texts can be interpreted in many ways. Texts are rarely concrete and simple. TakeThe Bible, a book that is one of the most popular and famous books in history but is interpreted differently by every person. Acknowledging more than one perspective on a certain aspect of the text or acknowledging that perhaps the writer is intentionally ambiguous is a valuable skill that demonstrates you have developed a powerful insight into your text.

Use appropriatemetalanguageto construct a supported analysis of a text

Plan and revise written work for ﬂuency and coherence

Use the conventions of spelling, punctuation and syntax of Standard Australian English.

Name: ______

Wellington Secondary College

Year 12 Holiday Homework Checklist

This checklist is designed to assist you to complete your English holiday homework. Tick each box as you complete each task.
1. Purchase English texts for 2016: Mind of a Thief, No Sugar, Stasiland. You must also purchase a dictionary. / £
2. Purchase stationery for English: a folder/binder, four dividers, plastic pocket inserts and loose-leaf paper / £
3. Secure the Year 12 English timeline into the front of your English folder. / £
4. Complete questions 1 to 5. This includes reading the play No Sugar. / £
5. Complete the Context booklet (to be distributed in your second Orientation session) and read the memoir The Mind of a Thief. / £
6. Bring the two completed booklets and all your texts to your first English lesson of 2016.
PLEASE NOTE: your first lesson may be on the first day of the school year, so that is when this booklet is due in. / £
7. Make sure all boxes on this checklist are ticked off. / £
8. Bring to class with you a positive attitude and resilience, so that you will be ready to work hard and with motivation in order to succeed in Year 12 English! / £

READING AND RESPONDING - Text Study: No Sugar

No Sugar character map

Son of Daughter of

children

fall in love and have a baby

married

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No Sugar stage map

No Sugar stage

In the ‘split scenes’ - the police
station and Neville’s office are
in the same space.

Task 1): Complete the following prompts to reflect on how split scenes are used in Act 1.

Act 1, scene 2:

In this scene, the way Neville speaks about the conditions of Aboriginal is (compared/contrasted/juxtaposed/paralleled – choose one) with what is actually occurring in Northam. He says ... while what is happening in Northam is ... The effect of this is to ...

Act 2, scene 7:

In this split scene, we see Jimmy and Gran in different situations, but both are trying to ... The use of a split scene here shows us that ...

Overall: Jack Davis uses split scenes in No Sugar to ....

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Read through each of the tasks below very carefully. You are to complete the following questions to prepare you for your study of the play No Sugar by Jack Davis.

2.a) Define the following words using your OWN words. Make sure you UNDERSTAND the definitions.

WORD / DEFINITION / LINKS WITHIN THE TEXT
Genocide
Miscegenation
Displacement
Dehumanisation
Disenfranchisement / When a group of people’s legal and voting rights are denied to them.
the consequences are that they lose their voice and power in important decisions that may affect them.
Segregation
Bureaucracy / A group ofofficialsandadministrators,especiallyofagovernment
or governmentdepartment, characterised by routine and paper work
Decimation

b) AFTER reading the play, choose 3 words from the list above, and write a detailed response for each word (at least 5-6 sentences), using the word to examine an element of the play.

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3. Read the information below and fill in the blanks with the missing words from the text box:

erase families generations mixed turned part-aborigine typical inferior approval features proclaimed rape breeding power forced atrocities stage Aborigines servants ironically

Auber Octa*vius Neville is a character in the play No Sugar. He was the Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia from 1915 to 1940. This position, , had been created by the British Parliament in response to ______committed against the indigenous population in the late nineteenth century. Under the Aborigines Act of 1905, the Chief Protector was given almost absolute ______over the destinies of indigenous people, both of full and ______descent. Neville would use this power, in his own words, “to merge the blacks into our white community” so that “we could eventually forget that there were ever any ______in Australia”. His belief that eugenics principles could be applied to produce a “superior” society was ______of the people of the time.

Aborigines were to them ______: like the mentally handicapped, they were a “degenerate” element capable of scientific removal from society. The first thing to be done, Neville ______, was to eliminate “the full blood”. This would be accomplished by the process of natural selection: the diseases and drink brought by white settlers were decimating the tribes. The problem, as a Ministerial adviser put it in 1930, was that “full bloods were dying out, but the half-castes were ______like rabbits”.

In fact they were breeding because of the ______of Aboriginal women and the fathering of “half-caste” children by pastoralists who made no attempt to educate them or support them. Neville’s eugenic solution, since aboriginality was regarded as a valueless trait, was to “breed it out” by progressive miscegenation, to produce ______with skins light enough to permit their “absorption” into white society. In practice this meant the ______removal of girls from their indigenous ______, and then training them to work as domestic servants for white families, where they could mate with whites and produce whiter children, who would be unaware of their ______identity.

“To achieve this end, we must have charge of these children at the age of six years,” Neville insisted. “In Western Australia,” he boasted, “we have power under the Act to take away any child from its mother at any ______of its life” and “until the children are taken… and trained apart from their parents no real progress towards assimilation is to be expected”. The children were to be kept apart from their families and their culture, educated at settlement schools and ______into “useful workers”, by which he meant poorly paid ______for white families. By thus entering the white community in the lowest social strata, marrying (with state ______) whites and lighter “castes”, Aboriginal physical and genetic ______would gradually be bred out. In the book Broken Circles the author Anna Haebich writes: “essentially Neville’s vision was a program of racial and social engineering designed to ______all Aboriginal characteristics from a desired white Australia… it was predicated on the removal and institutionalisation of ‘mixed race’ children.” (From ‘Well-Intentioned Genocide’ by Geoffrey Robertson)

4. Complete some research on the Stolen Generation and complete the table below:

The Stolen Generation / Write your answers below
List your sources on the right -what websites (DO NOT write the word ‘Google’), books etc. did you use? / Set your work out like this:
Title of website, author, full URL (website address)
What is the Stolen Generation? (use your OWN words)
When did it occur?
Who implemented it?
Who did it affect?
(use your OWN words)
Why was it implemented? (use your OWN words)
The Australian Human Rights Commission has stated that the policy can be labelled as ‘genocide’. Why might the Commission think so?

5. Answer the following questions in detail. (At least 5-6 sentences).

a) No Sugar is a play about the often untold perspectives of Australian history, the stories of Aboriginal treatment under a dominant white government. However, is this play written for an Aboriginal, or a white Australian, audience? Explain your response.

What do you think Davis’s intention was when writing for this audience? Of what was he trying to make this audience aware?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

b) Consider the following characters and their behaviour throughout the play. Fill in the blanks in the table below, and then answer the following question.

CHARACTER / ACTIONS/ATTITUDE / OUTCOME (what happens to this character by the end of the play?)
Jimmy / - Aggressive
- Violent
- Impulsive
- Rebellious
- Troublemaking
- Injured
-
-
Joe / - Initially aggressive
- Angry
- Thoughtful
-
-
Billy / -
-
-
-

Based on the outcomes for these characters, what kind of behaviour and attitudes do you think Davis would like future generations of Aboriginal people to adopt? Explain your answer.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

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