Teaching Package by Sue McMurtrie

Text selection

A Bus Called Heaven by Bob Graham

Rationale
Text level
Sentence level
Word level / A Bus Called Heaven by Bob Graham (2011) is a narrative about the mysterious arrival of an abandoned bus in a city neighbourhood and how this occurrence brings great changes to the community. The vision of the main character, Stella, enables the whole community to come together and bring the bus back to life by creating a space that can be used by all. The complication stage is resolved by the determination and resolve of Stella to save the sparrow chicks nesting in the bus’ engine in an epic game of table football.
This narrative text was selected as it is close to age appropriate for year 2/3. The text is culturally inclusive and the illustrations reflect the broader EAL/D community. It presents valuable themes exploring community building, leadership and empowerment. The text is well written using literate language and the illustrations relate directly to the words enhancing meaning. It includes vivid descriptions of events and the main character, Stella and features dramatic dialogue.
The story is engaging, rich in meaning, entertaining and a joy to read.
It has language features that can be used to teach students about a wide range of effective writing strategies.
This narrative has a classic structure including an orientation, a series of complications and resolutions. It includes dialogue as well as rich literate language. The text has good sentence structure and use of cohesive devices such as character development and marked themes at the beginning of sentences to foreground circumstances of time and place working to push the story along. Sentences using marked themes are rewarded in writing.
The text has:
·  Complex sentences with marked theme
·  A wide variety of prepositional phrases
The text has:
·  excellent evocative vocabulary
·  a range of verbal processes
Worthwhile teaching outcomes:
The text can be used to focus student attention on the following:
·  Improving the resolution stage and close of the narrative
·  The use of marked themes: the element of sentence structure that give special prominence to something that is not the subject of the sentence by putting it first, used to evoke a particular meaning. In this text many sentences are foregrounded with circumstantial meanings of time and place.
·  Looking at ways to develop a character through word choice
·  Exploring prepositional phrases
Explicit learning outcomes I will focus on are summarised as follows:
1. Writing effective resolutions or story endings.
2. Using marked theme to write complex sentences that foreground circumstances of time and place to evoke a particular meaning.
or clear to the reader.
Australian Curriculum links:
Language:
Text structure and organization: Understand that different types of texts have identifiable text structures and language features that help the text serve its purpose (ACELA1463).
Literature:
Examining literature: Discuss how language is used to describe the settings in texts, and explore how the settings shape the events and influence the mood of the narrative (ACELT1599).
Literacy:
Create short imaginative texts using growing knowledge of text structures and language features for familiar and some less familiar audiences, selecting print and multimodal elements appropriate to the audience and purpose (ACELY1671).
Field / The themes in the book include: How things and people together can be agents of change. Stella is the main character in the book and presented with a challenge she is able to save an old bus from the crusher with the help of the whole community. The narrative shows how Stella and an old bus can build relationships and friendships between neighbours across cultures and ages. It is possible to create a vibrant, tolerant and happy community. It is about leadership. Stella’s vision and determination to express her views and take a stand, leads the community into a stoush with the authorities. The outcome demonstrates that communities can have a powerful voice in our society if they work together.
Another theme in the narrative is that we come from many different backgrounds and cultures while at the same time we share many things in common, enjoying food, games, dancing and music.
Students must understand concepts such as ‘abandoned’, traffic rules/regulations, the possible use of buses for purposes other than transport, graffiti, the Boneyard, the Crusher and table football I they are to understand the plot development of the complication stage.
Tenor / The characters in the book form relationships with each other as they bring the old bus back to life. People in the neighbourhood suddenly start to speak to each other as they are united in the joint purpose of restoring the bus as a community meeting place. The old bus itself takes on a human-like characteristics and the author builds empathy for it by using language such as:
tired, old and sick
the bus settled in
the bus saw a bit of new paint
life returned to the old bus
Stella (meaning ‘star’) takes on angelic characteristics in the story, the colour of moonlight, fingers fluttered as though she has special powers. Her character is built up so that the reader and the other characters in the story feel a little awestruck by her and wonder what she is capable of. She becomes the leader of the quest to save the bus. The author develops Stella’s character from being a child that sucks her thumb to a determined force to be reckoned with and the readers are positioned to observe these changes as the story progresses.
Mode / The mode of ‘A bus called Heaven’ is written literate language.
The narrative gives the students an opportunity to work with a ‘literate’ text. It is complex in its structure and language choices and includes good examples of cohesive devices that organise the flow of information at text and sentence level:
·  Good example of how to close a story –one cycle
·  Good examples of prepositional phrases
·  Excellent character development – one cycle
·  Use of circumstances as theme (marked theme)
Building contextual understandings

Acknowledge prior learning, experiences and knowledge:

Brainstorm and discuss how are buses used in Australia and in other countries?

What is a boneyard yard and what happens there?

What is the law and regulations?

What is graffiti?

Where do people meet in the city to make friends and spend time with friends? The piazza in Italy, the village square, the café, the park, at clubs, watching or playing sport and games, at the library, at the shopping mall, in the home. Record responses on the whiteboard.

Building the field:

·  Build the field about the diversity of uses of buses across the world. Most common use as transport. How are buses used in different cultures? Show image of a bus in India with people sitting on the roof. Show images of the different uses of buses, as a gym, a science bus, a library bus etc.

·  An understanding of the law. What are regulations? Why do we have them? Are they important? Show the NO PARKING signs and ask students in pairs to tell each other what their purpose is. Ask students what would happen if they were the driver of a bus and they parked their bus on the school soccer oval? A regulation would be broken and they may receive a fine. This is called causing an obstruction. What about parking the bus next to a NO PARKING sign and leaving it there? The bus may be towed away by a tow truck. Show the image of a bus being towed away.

·  Where do abandoned cars and buses go when they no longer work and cannot be repaired? To the scrap heap, wreckers or boneyard. What happens to them there? Show students a picture sequence of what happens to used or abandoned vehicles/buses. Using attached images, introduce the language: The boneyard, the crusher, the tow truck. Mix up the sequence of pictures x 4 and ask students in small groups to put them back into the correct order and then explain the sequence to one of the other groups.

·  They are crushed, shredded and recycled. Show DVD/youtube of the processes at work in a wreckers yard.

http://www.southerncrossmetalrecyclers.com.au/carcompaction.html

Features images of a scrap metal yard and a crusher machine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTiLtyZOwow

Title: How to recycle a car- curiosity goes green.

This you tube video features a crusher and a shredder.

·  What is graffiti? Painting on walls, buildings even houses. Is it breaking the law? Sometimes, that is why sometimes the people come at night when no-one is around and paint. What is tagging? Is it a kind of art? What is its purpose? What do people think about graffiti? Show examples of the graffiti artwork in the lane ways of Melbourne. Where do you find graffiti? This website has photos of graffiti in Melbourne: http://www.onlymelbourne.com/melbourne-picture-gallery/thumbnails.php?album=65

Show attached images of bus with tagged graffiti and then show image of legally painted bus from Thailand.

·  What is a vacant allotment? It is land which has been left, free of any use. No houses are on it and no people are using it.

·  What is your favourite tale game? What is table football? How do you play it? How do you win this game? Show images of the game being played in Africa and other countries across the world. Explain how the aim is to score goals against your opponent. If possible take in a mini version of table football. Talk about the position of goal keeper and what the job entails: to defend the goal. Point out the figure on the table that is the goal keeper. Explain the slang way of saying goal keeper in English is ‘goalie’.

·  What is traffic in a city? All the vehicles that use the roadways, the collective term is ‘traffic’.

·  What is a boss? The person in charge.

·  What is a donation? When people give something for free.

·  What is heaven? What does this word mean? In English it can be used colloquially to mean an ideal place. “I’m in heaven”. Discuss and explore Religious meanings. Discuss the colloquial use of the word heaven in English. I’m in heaven when I swim at the beach. Think of your favourite thing or place. In small groups, ask students to complete the sentence orally ‘I’m in heaven when….’

Activity:

Imagine you have been given a bus and it is parked in your garden at home. It is old and abandoned. The engine doesn’t work. You can use it for anything you want but it can’t move. What would you use it for? Show picture of my vegetable garden bus full of produce such as bananas and avocadoes.

Provide each student with a blank outline of a bus. Ask students to create a special use for their bus and draw the details. Students can then orally share their bus use ideas with others in their group in the form of a one minute presentation: What my bus is for and why.

Text orientation

Phrases to foreground in Text Orientation:

A hand painted sign

a sea of traffic…

The bus brought change (not money but new things began to happen)

…bus is as sad as a whale on a beach ( meaning out of place)

…climbed on board (onto the bus)

The bus settled in (where bus is given human characteristics and made itself comfortable)

Weeds nudged up (weeds grew up close to the tyres)

…the bus saw a bit of new paint (can buses see? Idiomatic expressions: saw a bit of new paint meaning it was painted a bit)

A little pink glow crept across Stella’s cheek (her face slowly changed colour to pink)

Life returned to the old bus.

Make it sparkle.

Stella’s fingers fluttered…

Amid the frantic flapping of the sparrow’s wings…

…the grass was danced flat…

Key words:

Heaven

Abandoned

Traffic

moonlight

whoever’s it is: whoever owns it

pavement

regulation

an idea

donations

table football

obstruction

tow truck

engine

the boneyard

the crusher

Outcomes / Students will be able to retell the whole story including the ending.
Students will understand and be familiar with the story line.
Students will be familiar with the settings, characters and plot.
Resources / Small table football game, use the illustrations from the story.
Method / Tell the story in story telling mode using the spirit of the text, some key vocabulary from the text and the illustrations to introduce characters and concepts.
Explain the sub plot.
Explain the thoughts and feelings of the characters and participants.
Key teaching strategies / Use multi modal supports:
Visuals, gestures, different voices, repetition of words, include difficult or uncommon words from the text, elaborate and tell the story ‘between the lines’ (the sub-plot).
Script / Today I’m going to introduce you to a book called A bus called Heaven. It is a narrative and in the story there is a problem or complication that the main character, Stella, decides to solve. There is a resolution at the end of the story that is very exciting. The story is written by Bob Graham. He is an Australian author and an excellent writer. I am going to use my words to tell the story not Bob Graham’s words.
P1.
This is a story about a bus that has been abandoned. That means it has been left and no-one seems to want it anymore. The story is set in the city and we can tell that because we can see the buildings and traffic, there are lots of cars making a sea of traffic. The bus just appeared one day out of a sea of traffic right outside the house of a little girl called Stella (point to Stella in the picture holding her Mum’s hand). The other people looking at the bus probably live nearby too.