Eclipsed By Ith at School
Course Outline
Students do not need external assessments to participate in Born to Soar courses. We ask that you read the course descriptions carefully to determine that the required skill level is appropriate for your students.
The ‘Eclipsed by Ith’ Course endeavours to challenge students to hold firmly to their creative thoughts and not to surrender them without a battle. Together the participants will delight in the language of the early 20th Century through the sharing of one of the short stories penned by the fantasy/science fiction writer Lord Dunsany who inspired so many others to write a hundred years ago. Students will take up their quills; that is, their pens or keyboards; and change the world! Yes change the world; accomplished while searching for deeper understanding and uncovering courage to substantiate their thoughts, by scouring through words and passionately hunting for the symbols and secrets that will capture another’s thoughts and hold them with an embrace they will hold dear eternally. The facilitator will lead the students on the hunt developing skills and understandings that will open their minds to difference of opinion through discussion and sharing of their own insights. A particular focus will be on language that is associated with a specific time or place or even a community. The students will learn the importance of drawing upon the writer’s actual words while still allowing for their own interpretation and creative thought to be fashioned and shared with others. Edward Plunkett said, “A man is a very small thing, and the night is very large and full of wonders.” As writers we will seek the wonders and acknowledge them.
It will be necessary at times for the students to complete tasks away from the computer and the virtual classroom. The students will need to have a notebook and writing materials for their ongoing work associated with this course.
Student pre-requisites skills required to join this classroom:
- advanced literacy skills well above their year level
This course has been undertaken successfully by highly able students in Years 4, 5 and 6.
Parents please note:
- an adult supervisor needs to be on hand during virtual classes
- students’ work will need to be uploaded to their personal cloud folder
Teachers please note:
- an adult supervisor should be allocated to virtual classroom times
- students’ work will need to be uploaded to their personal cloud folder
Australian Curriculum English Descriptions
The specific English skills that are targeted in this course are:
Year 7 / Language / Language for interaction
- Understand how language is used to evaluate texts and how evaluations about a text can be substantiated by reference to the text and other sources
Year 7 / Literature / Responding to literature
- Reflect on ideas and opinions about characters, settings and events in literary texts, identifying areas of agreement and difference with others and justifying a point of view
Year 7 / Literacy / Interacting with others
- Plan, rehearse and deliver presentations, selecting and sequencing appropriate content and multimodal elements to promote a point of view or enable a new way of seeing
Year 8 / Language / Language for interaction
- Understand how conventions of speech adopted by communities influence the identities of people in those communities
Year 8 / Language / Expressing and developing ideas
- Recognise that vocabulary choices contribute to the specificity, abstraction and style of texts
Course Features
- Duration 4 hours
- Skill level Advanced literacy skills well above their year level
- Students Enrolled 0