Classroom

Digital Learning Objects

Celebrity Garbage: Cal Calvino/Tiffany Love/Zac Bronski (Years 7-11)
Language Focus: Writing a Recount

These DLOs provide a context for, and explicit knowledge about, recount writing (structure and language features). Students scan the information on paper in a bin, choosing the correct details to assemble the data. Students then read a model recount, and look at the highlighted language and structural features before selecting the appropriate phrases and then sequencing these to build a recount of the movie star’s disappearance. Note that the data gathering section of the DLO uses present continuous or present tense verbs whereas the recount uses mostly past tense verbs, active and passive.

The texts have a slight increase in difficulty level (Cal Calvino Tiffany Love Zac Bronski).

Before using the digital object

Think - Pair - Share

• What can you recall about how a recount is structured? (What comes first? What comes next? What is in the middle? At the end?) What sort of verbs are used in a recount? What else do you know about recounts?

After using the digital object

1. Students retell what the missing celebrity did. Write their recount on the board.

   For example - Cal Calvino
   took dog for a clip, wash and blow dry
   boarded plane
   registered at Sun City Hotel resort under false name
   should have been contacted by the dognappers
   may have left the hotel with them

   For example - Tiffany Love
   sent an email to Greg
   visited the hairdresser
   boarded a plane
   appeared in court
   it is likely...

   For example - Zac Bronski:
   failed to attend the awards dinner
   was sent an email
   visited the dentist
   took a limo
   registered at Silver City Grande Plaza Hotel
   arrived at Wolf Studio
   became the star

2. Students identify the action verbs. Discuss the tense of the verbs, and the use of the passive verb where the celebrity was the receiver, not the doer.

3. What words were used in the DLO to sequence the different pieces of information? What other ways could have been used to sequence the information? (Time connectives such as then, when, later.)

4. Discuss the structural features of recounts (orientation, sequence of events, re-orientation). Students identify the stages in the outline of the story on the board.

5. Discuss the use of nouns to name people, places and things.

6. Students write their own draft recount of a recent event, using an annotated exemplar as a scaffold if needed. Use the annotated recounts in the English Language Intensive Programme (ELIP) folder. In pairs, at the draft stage, students annotate for action verbs in the past tense, sequence words and structural features.

7. Students write their final copy.