Resource+3+(Naomi)

  //**Are we there yet?**// **by Alison Lester** **Explanation of the resource**

This picture book follows a family’s journey around Australia in a campervan from the perspective of eight-year-old Grace. Meaning created by visual and written text combines to provide an authentic, descriptive, informative and comical recount of the journey. As the family travels to significant places in Australia, including, for example, the Blue Mountains, the Great Australian Bight, Monkey Mia, Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef, the illustrations and text provide rich description of the natural, heritage and built features in the environment. Their journey, based on the author's own experiences, is marked out on maps throughout the book.

**Relevance to HSIE outcome ENS2.5**

The resource is strongly linked to the HSIE Patterns of Place and Location outcome, ENS2.5 Describes places in the local area and other parts of Australia and explains their significance (Board of Studies, 2006, p.21). As the written and visual text describe “significant natural, heritage and built features in… Australia, and their uses” and the maps indicate “the location of… [significant places and] capital cities in Australia,” the book provides an excellent resource for exploring this syllabus subject matter relating to ENS2.5 (Board of Studies NSW, 2006, p.55). Students will be able to learn about notable places in Australia and why they are significant through engaging with the experiences of the characters. For example, as they read about and view Grace's almost magical experience of whale watching, they learn about one activity which attracts people to the Head of Bight. In addition, students develop understanding of connection to land and country as they consider the imagery and meaning behind Grace's assertion that "Uluru is the heart of Australia."

**Aspects of literacy to be explored**

As an example of a narrative, //Are we there yet?// provides an opportunity to explore the social purpose of this text type (“to entertain and instruct through dealing with unusual and unexpected development of events”) and use this understanding to to evaluate its usefulness in gaining accurate and detailed information about significant places in Australia (Droga and Humphrey, 2003, p.149). Students may compare the value of the narrative in this case with the that of an information report. This same evaluation and comparison may be informed by taking into account grammatical features of the narrative, such as dialogue (e.g. “'Hats and sunscreen,' she'd say..”), figurative language (e.g. “fish... like sparkling jewels”) and use of past tense action and saying or thinking verbs relating to characters (e.g. fell asleep, swam, said) (Droga and Humphrey, 2003, p.149). These features may be highlighted to indicate that the narrative is predominantly anecdotal, rather than informative. However, the students may learn that the anecdotal and descriptive nature of the text allow them to empathise with the characters and thus gain insight into how the places the characters visit may be significant to individuals. For example, as mentioned above, the stirring imagery of Grace's metaphor, "Uluru is the heart of Australia,” may allow students to feel or empathise with a connection to land and country and understand that a site such as Uluru may be central to Australian identity. In relation to visual grammar, throughout the text Lester creates representational/experiential, interactive and compositional meaning which may be analysed by students as they seek information about significant places in Australia and learn how to use visual grammar to create meaning in their own texts. Illustrations provide a wealth of information about significant places which is not included in the written text. For example, as students read “Luke surfed on stone at Wave Rock” they also learn from the illustration about the colour, shape, size and appearance of the rock and the nature of the local vegetation. Narrative images also provide information about not only what significant sites look like but what people do there and thus why they are significant to people (e.g. Grace snorkelling and looking at fish and coral in the Great Barrier Reef). Using this book, students may learn about the use of demands, which require eye contact with a character (e.g. the family portrait on the first page) and offers, more frequent in this book, which allow the reader to peruse the image at their leisure and enjoy the scenery as the characters do (Callow, 2011). Students may learn that frequent long shots also allow the reader to enjoy the scenery, while medium shots invite them to figuratively join the characters on their journey. Students may also explore salience as they observe how colour, size and position can draw a viewer's eye to an image (for example, the bright red colour of Uluru which fills up the frame attracts the viewers attention). Students may learn about the use of vectors, created by real or imaginary lines, to direction attention to important parts of an illustration (Callow, 2011). For example, the tour guide's hand pointing and the direction of gaze of the other characters direct attention towards the cave paintings in Kakadu. Throughout the book, structured analytical maps of Australia indicate the location of capital cities and significant sites and provide an example of the map/s students may produce. Students may compare the modality of the naturalistic illustrations of this text with that of photographs in other related texts and discuss the value of the images in relation to their purpose of gaining information about and then advertising significant sites in Australia (Callow, 2011). <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Equipped with these understandings of visual techniques, students are thus more able to critically analyse visual texts to extrapolate desired information, as well as to produce their own visual texts effectively.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">**References**

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Board of Studies NSW (2006). K6 HSIE syllabus. Sydney: Author.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Board of Studies NSW (2007). K6 English syllabus. Sydney: Author.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Callow, J. (2011, August 3). //Interpreting visual language// (Lecture handout).

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Droga, L. and Humphrey, S. (2003). //Grammar and meaning: An introduction for primary teachers.// Berry: Target Texts.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Lester, A. (2004). Are we there yet? Camberwell, VIC: Penguin Group.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Image from http://www.puffin.com.au/products/9780670880676/are-we-there-yet