EDEE351: Assignment 2

This exemplar gives you some ideas about how you can set out the portfolio assignment, and the kind of
information you can include. You do not need to follow this layout exactly, but you should make sure to
include all the sections, in order.

This exemplar is annotated in blue and red font to give you some suggestions. If you use this document as a
template, make sure to delete the blue and red font!

Title of chosen book: ‘There’s a sea in my bedroom’, by Margaret Wild

Part A: Interrogate your book
1. Stage or Year level: Stage 1

2. Notes about background knowledge (about 100-200 words)

What general knowledge do the students need? Consider the purpose/themes of the text, general
knowledge about setting, motivations or intentions of the characters?
[check the marking rubric] Clearly and succinctly identify background knowledge of high interest and relevance to the stated year level,
to assist students to engage with:

 the purpose of the text,

 the storyline,
 its setting, and
 the intentions of the characters

To engage with this book, it would be useful to check that students have knowledge
 about the sea, that we can swim in the sea, but sometimes it can be rough and dangerous,
particularly when the waves are strong. Sometimes it can be gentle and easy to swim in. Within the
class we can share whether students have been to the beach, and whether they enjoyed the sea, or
perhaps found it scary.
 about beaches; that we can play on the beach, and we find things on the beach like shells
 that there are different kinds of shells. Conch shells are particularly interesting because when we
put them to our ear we hear a noise like the ocean.
 the idea of being afraid. (We could, in a gentle and safe way, talk about things we are afraid of or
don’t like). Perhaps the students have read other stories, or watched other stories of characters
who are afraid of something. We can talk about how we overcome fear.
 In introducing this book, we can talk about how David was afraid of the sea.

[At this point you can also start to think about other resources that you might use, for Section C: in this
example you might look for texts about the sea, about shells, or stories about characters who are afraid of
something and whose fear is resolved in some way. Or you might look for another text by Margaret Wild,
targeting the same age group.]
 3. Notes about language & visual features

When making these notes in the table, look for words that tell us who, what , where, when, why, or how.
(You might not find all of these, but ask yourself what the purpose of each phrase is. For example, some
stories start by telling us ‘where’, because they start with the setting. ‘There’s a sea in my bedroom’ begins
with ‘who’. )

You can also look for groups of words, e.g. noun groups, and think about what they do. For example, do
they give us more information about a character or a place or a time?

Use the template to make highly accurate notes about the text’s grammar and vocabulary and visual features.

Relevant literary devices, and their effect on the reader, are also noted.

Notes about grammar, vocabulary and visuals are very clearly related to meaning.

Text
David was frightened of the sea.
It was a huge, wet monster that
gobbled him up, knocked him
over, turned him upside down.
Notes about language (vocabulary and Notes about visual features
grammar)
David – name of character, who the
story is about. The story begins with the
character, because it’s the character’s
feelings that are the most important
theme of this story.

Frightened – tell us how he felt.

the sea – what he’s frightened of.
monster – metaphor for the sea, scary
thing
Huge, wet - describing words
Huge: - makes us feel inferior or small
Wet – dampening, uncomfortable
Gobbled him up
Knocked him over
Turned him upside down
The image gives us an idea of the
setting, and creates a visual link to
the title of the story (There’s a
sea…).
The image of the sea takes up most
of space on the double page,
reinforces the idea of ‘huge’. The
swell over the waves is also very
large compared to David, who is
drawn very small compared to the
sea.
David is running away from the

- three actions that the water: this is consistent with his

monster did. fear.

Scary, unsafe actions (monsters gobble The dark colours of the sea on the

up), you might get hurt left page reinforce the menace of

He didn’t like the sea. Short sentences make them seem the sea.

definite,
Not at all, not one bit.
The repeated ‘not’ emphasises David’s
 feeling: this is three ways of telling us he
didn’t like the sea. The sentence
fragments (‘Not at all, not one bit’ is not
a full sentence) also serves to emphasise
the ‘not’.

4. Notes about graphophonic, spelling or word knowledge.

Using words from the text as examples, explicitly identify and detail a range of different kinds of graphophonic and spelling knowledge
that you could teach, relevant to your identified age group.

In this section, you can make a note about what you think the students will already know. Then list some
different kinds of spelling or word knowledge, and give examples of words.

(For year 2/3, I assume that students have foundational alphabetic knowledge, and so will not struggle with
simple onset-rime patterns, such as ‘wet’. I expect they will know some sight words in this text, e.g., ‘the’,
‘of’, ‘was’, ‘it’, ‘up’

Spelling/word knowledge Examples

Onset-rime fr ight, h uge,
Past tense ‘-ed’ ending frightened, knocked, turned, gobbled
(note that with ‘gobbled’, we only add ‘d’,
as the ‘e’ is already in the word.)
Capitalisation for proper David
nouns
Compound words Upside
Morphology ‘frightened’ is made up of ‘frighten’ and
‘ed’
‘frighten’ is made up of ‘fright’ and ‘en’.
Apostrophe for contractions didn’t
Letter patterns e.g., ‘kn’ in ‘knocked’; double letters in
‘gobbled’.