Duration

30-45 minutes

Students will study the Tim Winton picture book, 'The Deep' and compare the style of text to 'Blueback'.

Preparation

This lesson is part of a unit of work on the text Blueback. It assumes some previous study of the text has already been completed. View the full Unit here.

In this lesson, you will introduce the text The Deep (by Tim Winton) to your students. In the first shared reading of this text, it is suggested you mask the text.

Western Australian curriculum

LEARNING AREA STRAND SUB-STRAND CODES
English Language Text structure and organisation ACELA1504
English Literature Literature and context ACELT1613
English Literature Responding to literature ACELT1614
English Literature Examining literature ACELT1616, ACELT1622
English Literacy Interacting with others ACELY1699, ACELY1709, ACELY1719

Steps

  1. Introduce the text, The Deep, by Tim Winton. Discuss what students already know about the author and his style of writing, based on their study of Blueback. Ask students questions such as – “looking at the cover, who is this text aimed at?; what is the purpose of this text?; what do you predict the story to be about?”
  2. Using a prepared version of the book (with text masked), read as a class using the pictures to create the story.
  3. Conduct a second shared reading of The Deep, this time without the text masked and compare how the two stories differ and why. Discuss the difference between this book and Blueback. Ask students questions such as – “what do the illustrations tell you?, how do they make you feel?” The main difference being that The Deep is a picture book and therefore does not need the descriptive language that is used in Blueback.

Keywords

the deep, blueback, tim winton, picture book, comparison, similarities and differences in texts