Resource+4

Resource 4 National Geographic Documentary: Exploring the Oceans- The Great Barrier Reef media type="youtube" key="wbNeIn3vVKM?fs=1" height="385" width="480" align="center"

Explanation of the resource: National Geographic is a well renowned documentary show/magazine which looks at documenting specific aspects of the human world. This is a quick overlook, found on youtube, of ‘Exploring Oceans: The Great Barrier Reef’. This documentary focuses on the growth of the reef and how it is the world’s largest living natural living wonder. It also focuses on some of the human impacts which have a negative effect upon the reef, and why the reef is so important to our ecosystem.

Relevance to the outcome: This resource is an effective introduction clip to start the student’s knowledge base on The Great Barrier Reef and people’s connection/responsibility to minus the human impact on the reef. The clip is in easy to understand language and is therefore suitable for stage 2; it uses visual aides to complement to diversity of the reef. This video is just a starting point as it describes some of the human impacts on the reef and the issues that arise from them: pollution, over fishing and the consequences of climate change. This resource will be used a stimulus for further research into the human impact on The Great Barrier Reef as it gives background knowledge on how our government have put rules and restrictions on the reef to keep it pristine. This resource will help start students knowledge of the plus and minus aspect of human interaction with the reef and will lead to writing and discussion skills to develop an exposition, and to help them have a viewpoint on these issues.

Aspect of Literacy to be Explored: This resource is an excellence source of information where students can use their literacy skills to gather only useful information and to use it to develop their own opinion on the issues. Students will be inclined to use their listening and talking skills while watching and discussing this multimodal text as it uses both sound and visual communication. Through this students will identify the interrelation between aspects of the 5 multiliteracies elements so that they can ‘patriciate in and construct text, critically aware of purpose and audience’ (Healy, 2004, p. 20). This will be developed throughout the multimodal program. Students will be given the opportunity to discuss in further detail some of the issues and how these consequences could outweigh the tourism factor. This stimulus sets up the ideas for the consequences: ‘Today about 33% of it is protected from fishing and other extractive activities. And efforts are underway to deal with pollution, over fishing and the consequences of climate change’.

Visual grammar is another key skill in which the students should be engaging with while watching this video. As documentaries uses images and videos to deeper the viewers understanding of the topic, the students must be aware of how the visual interact with the voice over. The use of visual within this clip are used to sway the audience to feel a certain way about the reef and it is described, students can focus on this aspect as it will be used to create their rich task at the ended, as they create a exposition like campaign video.

References: Healy, A. (2004). The critical heart of multiliteracies: four resources, multimodal texts and classroom practice. In Text next: new resources for literacy learning (pp.19-35). Newton, NSW: PETA.