Our World Bardi Jaawi Lesson

Teaching the book ‘Our World Bardi Jaawi, Life at Ardiyooloon’ in the early stage 1/stage 1 classroom requires a level of understanding regarding reading and writing models, visual literacy, and sensitivity towards Indigenous culture. The text is quite content dense and filled with illustrations and photographs, making an extended close study of the book appropriate.

‘Our World Bardi Jaawi, Life at Ardiyooloon’ is a considerably long book, in comparison to what could generally be found in early stage 1 classrooms. Therefore, the teaching approach must be appropriate and engaging. To avoid uninterested students, studying the book over a school term, would be appropriate, for both early stage 1 and stage 1 classes. The text details the lives of children in a remote Indigenous community. The book features language that students may not be familiar with, which may result in a tenuous understanding of the content. Upon considering this, my approach to studying the book would be to immerse the students in Indigenous culture. This would involve accompanying the text with
The writing as a product model centres on the concept that writing is unchanging, and can be dissected. Whilst this idea is commonly accepted and can help in understanding connections within texts, there is the possibility that students will be advised regarding every aspect of a text at once and that more important elements may be overlooked. In practice, this model focuses more on individual work and greatly emphasises the importance of an end product. This approach can be overwhelming to students, particularly to young students, as it is important for creativity and sharing of ideas to be encouraged. Whilst there is a place in education for product driven writing, it important for students to be immersed in a passionate and creative learning environment (Fried,