Gallipoli Film Study

This weeks students have been looking at the Gallipoli campaign. We also looked at The Australian War Memorial and its significance to the Australian people. Today students worked on pre- fiml activities so that they can more fully understand this iconic Australian film. Students worked on some of the dialogues that occur in the film, colloquial language and the concept of the British Empire. Each pair had an element to explore and present to their classmates. For some students this involved a small amout of research on topics such as The Light Horse Brigade, the British Empire, the money of the day, Ladies Patriotic Auxilliary, whilst others had to present a dialogue and explain what it meant.

28th September.

In pairs or threes, students were given a list of characteristics and actions of the two main characters Archy Hamilton and Frank Dunne. They had to work out which description fitted which character. There were four sets of descriptions. When they had finished their paired work they had to find the other group who had the same set of descriptions and share their outcomes. Each group of 5 or 6 then presented there work to the class. This was a reading, and a vocabulary building activity. All eight groups' work is up on display in the Quiet Room. Next job is writing a character study. Students drew their character out of a bag. On Tuesday we will focus on how to write up a detailed character description.

Update:  Tuesday 2nd October
Today after watching a short interview with Peter Weir the director of Gallipoli, we talked about how to write a character study. The following notes will help guide students through the process.  Characters in focus are Archy Hamilton played by Mark Lee, Frank Dunne played by Mel Gibson, Billy(Robert Grub), Barney (Tim McKenzie) and Snowy (David Argue). Students will write a character study on one of these.

Character Study

* Introduction

* Physical description

* Personality

* Use examples from the film to support your statements about the character.

Make very good notes before you start writing your paragraphs.

Refer to the character comments we did last week on the posters in the quiet room.

Talk to classmate who is doing the same character.

Look for ideas on the internet, read reviews, teacher notes, general comments. Extract what you need and make sure it is your words. Use KEYWORDS!


Useful sites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallipoli_(1981_film

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082432/

http://www.criticalconcern.com/gallipoli.htm

http://www10.pair.com/crazydv/weir/gallipoli/hart.html

http://www.markedbyteachers.com/gcse/english/gallipoli-character-sketch.html


Tomorrow morning students have the final spelling test on the Gallipoli Spelling Bingo words. They had a pretest today to sort out the ones they were experiencing difficulty with. Each student has their individual words to concentrate on written on a postcard with the feature they were having trouble being highlighted.

On Wednesday the 3rd of October I will be reading the students the following book which I only purchased on the weekend. For a sneak preview and review see:
http://littlelibraryofrescuedbooks.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/lone-pine-by-susie-brown-margaret-warner.html