10. A student analyses and synthesises information and ideas into sustained and logical argument for a range of purposes and audiences.

 Questions

• Who came as migrants?
• Where did they come from?
• Why did they come?
• Where did they settle?

Resources

• Department of Immigration & Multicultural & Indigenous Affairs web site www.immi.gov.au
• Research Migration on the Internet
• Check resources in the school library.

Brainstorm
For each question, each student lists information found on butcher’s paper

Research in groups

• Australian post-WWII migration
• Snowy River scheme
• White Australia policy.

Each group shares their information from the research visually and verbally.

6. A student engages with the details of text in order to respond critically and personally.

Feliks Skrzynecki
Read the poem aloud to the students.

Discuss the implications of the use of language.

Focus on language
The first line begins with the personal pronoun “my” that illustrates a particular relationship between the composer and the subject, while the adjective “gentle” helps to define the way the composer feels about his father. Note the use of the caesura in stanza 3, to make the responder focus on this childhood memory.

Brainstorm in groups

• How does the speaker feel about the man he is describing?
• For example: admiration, love, understanding, sympathy; optimism, nostalgia.
• Underline the words in the text that influence your decision.

For example:
-“gentle”; “my”; “loved his garden as an only child”; “but I’m alive”;
-“Always shook hands too violently”
-“like a dumb prophet,

Watched me pegging my tents/ Further and further south of Hadrian’s Wall”.

Group work questions

1.   What evidence can you find in the poem to tell you that this attitude is maintained throughout the poem?
   
2. What does the simile describing the garden as “an only child” tell us about the garden and the man?
   
3. What perspective is apparent in “Did your father ever attempt to learn English?”

4. A student describes and analyses the way that language forms and features, and structures of texts shape meaning and influence responses.

7. A student adapts and synthesises a range of textual features to explore and communicate information, ideas and values for a variety of purposes, audiences and contexts.

Crossing the Red Sea
Introduce the concepts of:

• displacement
• refugees.

Introduce the Biblical story of crossing the Red Sea and the significance this had for the Jewish people. It was a symbol of liberation and divine intervention.

Explain the chaos presented in the first section. Highlight the images of confusion from the poem.

Discussion questions

• What is significant about “Neither masters nor slaves”?
  
• Why is “Time…hoisting/ In mock salute?”

Explain all of the perspectives in Section 3.

Comment on the juxtaposition of the kind sea and the “Walled-up griefs’ in section 4.

Explain the last three lines of the poem.

When we think of displacement we often think of the negative sense of the word. It conjures up images of whole races of people being dispersed and dispossessed. Such stories abound in the Bible and throughout history.

Research on the Internet:

• displaced persons
• refugees in the modern world
• story of Moses crossing the Red Sea.

Group work

• Paraphrase the poem so that it reads like a piece of prose.
  
• How does the idea of displaced persons fit the refugees as described in the poem?
  
• Account for the difference in tone between this poem and Feliks S?

  For example, exile; dispossessed of culture; family broken up; assimilation of new culture; language acquisition; fragmentation of social groups; search for new identity: who am I?

Presentation
Groups present to the class the findings of research into:

• history of displaced persons
• refugees.

Investigation or interviews
What are some of the effects of displacement?

A number of NSW students have experienced being cut off from their own culture and can easily draw on their situation to provide a list and/or comments.

8. A student articulates and represents own ideas in critical, interpretive and imaginative texts from a range of perspectives.

1. A student demonstrates understanding of how relationships between composer, responder, text and context shape meaning.

10 Mary Street
Read Sydney Morning Herald article, “Mary Street and me”(Jan 8,1997).

Consider:

• structure/language elements-tone/purpose
• audience/responder.

Read the poem aloud to the class.

Focus questions
Explain the poem by inviting class discussion through the following:

1. How is the rhythm of the daily routine suggested?

2. As in Feliks, there is a strong sense of the warmth and affection that the composer has for his parents. How are these emotions captured in the language?

Group work questions

1. How is the information presented?
   
2. Is Skrzynecki’s perspective clear?
   
3.   What is his perspective?

Task
In a paragraph respond to this poem with your reaction. Consider the different reactions of child and parents

Note-taking on focus questions
Question 1, for example:
All of the following suggest routine:

• repetition of “For nineteen years”
• use of “hum-drum”
• simile “like a well oiled lock.
• Question 2, for example:
• There’s a sense of safety/security in:
• simile “Like adopted children” reveals nurturing nature of parents
•   warm imagery of home in “heated discussions and embracing gestures”;
•   juxtaposition of him “ravaging” the garden whilst his parents nurtured it.

10. A student analyses and synthesizes information and ideas into sustained and logical argument for a range of purposes and audiences.

3. A student develops language relevant to the study of English.

8. A student represents and articulates own ideas in critical, interpretive, and imaginative texts from a range of perspectives.

Migrant hostel
Read short story, “The day that lasted forever”, by Peter Skrzynecki in DUTTON, G, (Ed.) (1992) Country Childhoods, University of Queensland Press; 1992, pp 106-116.

Read a report on refugee resettlement:

HEALY, J. (Ed.) Issues in society: refugees and illegal immigrants, 2000, The Spinney Press.

Read the poem aloud to the class.

Discuss the issues with the class, especially language associated with barriers. Discuss the tone of the poem.

Focus questions
1.How does the poet give the responder a sense of the migrants’ anonymity?

2. How is security suggested?

3. What is the persona’s perspective of the migrant hostel? What aspects of language reveal this?

Model how to make notes on poems before getting students to do so. Use the following areas:

• subject/ theme
• content
• atmosphere/ mood
•   language features
• tone
• purpose
• outstanding features
• perspective

 Group work questions

• What is the story about?
• Where is it set?
•   What is the perspective of the composer?
• How do you know this from the language?

Research
What are some of the issues relating to migrant resettlement in this country?

Collect articles from newspapers and magazines on:

• refugees and resettlement
• the plight of illegal migrants.

These are to be used for discussion.


Note-taking on focus questions
Question 1, for example:

• through the imagery of the opening of the poem: “No one kept count/ Of all the comings and goings”.

Question 2, for example:

• through the sustained imagery of birds; “like a homing pigeon…always sensing a change” reveals insecurity and uncertainty of the future.

Question 3, for example:

• Through the use of a simile to describe the barrier gate to the hostel area, “As it rose and fell like a finger”, the responder feels that the hostel is cut off from real life, separate and therefore preventing interaction.

Group work
On butcher’s paper write down the significant features of the poem by using the areas modelled by the teacher. Use class notes and handouts, as well as your own ideas.

11. A student draws upon the imagination to transform experience and ideas into text demonstrating control of language.

1. A student demonstrates understanding of how relationships between composer, responder, text and context shape meaning.

Kornelia Woloszczuk
Read the poem aloud to the class.

Discuss the ideas in the poem. For example:

• water imagery
• violent images
• feelings of inadequacy expressed by the persona.

Focus questions

1. What has caused the division between mother and son?

2. What perspective does the poet have on his role as son?

3. What techniques does the poet use to suggest Kornelia’s loneliness and isolation?

Representation
Design a collage that represents the perspective that the poet presents through his images and feelings. Use photographs and words from magazines, your own illustrations, graphics, quotations, symbols, etc.

Refer to class notes and handouts. Use your own ideas as well.

Note-taking on focus questions
Question 1, for example:

• cultural displacement seen through the use of rhetorical questioning, as in, “Where did I go wrong?”
• guilt, can’t live up to expectations, as in “children who forget you”.
• Question 2, for example:
• “Walking/ Behind her”
• disturbed natural imagery of “darkness of storms”.
• Question 3, for example:
• negativity, alienation of “dragging swamp”.

2. A student demonstrates understanding of the relationships among texts.

Chronic ward
View the movie One flew over the cuckoo’s nest.

Access online the Sydney Morning Herald www.smh.com.au]

and read the newspaper article “Crib fight goes from bad to worse”.

Find meanings for the word “chronic”.

Divide the class into three groups and give each group a stanza from the poem.

Group work

1. How can you predict that this poem will be different from the others set for study?
2. What similarities are there between the movie and the poem?
3. How can the migrant experience of alienation be applied to this poem?

Underline or highlight
The images that suggest this poem is in a hospital and is about mentally disturbed people.

Brainstorm what is occurring in each stanza and report to the class.
What perspectives are presented?
What techniques are used to convey these perspectives?

• What does a postcard mean to you?
• Why do people send them instead of letters?
• What is the purpose and the nature of their content?
• What type of language is used?

1. What does the description reveal about Skrzynecki’s perspective?
2. What is the effect of the composer addressing Warsaw as if it were a person?
3. Why has he chosen the word “Haunts”? What connotations does it have?
4. How would you describe the feeling at the end of the poem- is it one of hope or despair? Find a quote to support you opinion.

• language: colloquial, descriptive
• purpose: personal, brief.