Resource+3

= ﻿ Resource 3 =


 * Description of resource: **

This resource is a poster that is in the form of an advertisement for the Keep Australia Beautiful organization that aims to create awareness about environmental pollution and ways to live sustainably, recycle and maintain the beauty within Australia. This particular resource, which is effective in utilizing aspects of visual grammar, formed part of the 2008 campaign for Keep Australia Beautiful Week. This campaign drew attention to the long jeopardy of waste that is non-biodegradable, suggesting that if plastic water bottles were around at the time of dinosaurs, they would still exist today.


 * Relevance to unit outcome Aspect of literacy explored in unit:**

This resource is directly linked to the ENS2.6 Human Society and its Environment outcome for it allows students to use visual literacy as a means to identify responsible ways of interacting with environments (bored of studies, 2007, p. 33) through the interpretation and creation of an advertisement. This particular resource examines humans negative impact on the environment and encourages the audience to take action to reduce waste. Students can use this resource to gain an understanding of how advertisements can be used to influence an audiences decision making, which is a skill needed to achieve their multimodal text.

Through the use of this campaign, students are provided with an opportunity to deconstruct an advertisement, a multimodal text that many students will be familiar with, as it largely consumes our society. In doing so, students learn to interpret visual literacy through the explicit deconstruction of the visual structures and to gain meaning from such a text, through an understanding of its purpose and function (Callow, 1999, p. 82). The advertisement also links with the exposition text type, as it also serves the purpose to persuade and influence an audience to take action to reduce waste. The advertisement draws upon the elements of composition, interaction and representation, providing an image for students to interpret certain aspects. For instance, the use of salience (through the use of the large dinosaur), a reading path (that follows from the yellow print), vectors (strong lines between the dinosaur and the plastic bottle), and the use of contrasting colour (yellow contrasted against a dark brown/grey background). Due to the familiarity of advertisements to students’ lives, students can use this resource to discuss the function of the use of these elements within the text, and to analyse the effectiveness of the advertisement in achieving its purpose to influence an audience. Through the interpretation of this visual literacy, students can become informed about how certain images/ideas can be preferred and argued through advertisement to impact on our decision making (Callow, 1999, p.82). This will assist students in creating their own effective advertisement within their rich multimodal text.

Reference: Board of Studies. (2007). HSIE K-6 Syllabus. Sydney: Author Board of Studies. (1998). English K‐6 Syllabus. Sydney: Author Callow, J. (1999). Reading the Visual: An introduction. Image Matters-visual texts in the classroom. Marrickviller, NSW, Primary English Teachers Association: 1-3. .