Rigby Blueprints: Upper Primary Series A. Unit 4: Shaping our nation
Pearson Education Australia.
Recommended age: The year level correlation for the Upper Primary
Series A set is Year 5.
The Rigby Blueprints sets are unit-based literacy series with a
strong Australian and explicit literacy focus. Each unit has a Big
Ideas Book, one Guided Reading Book and five Topic Books; three
non-fiction and two fiction. Each topic book supports the main ideas
of the correlating 'pacing text' from the Big Ideas Book.
Also included in the Big Ideas Books are several related texts for
each pacing text. The books are separated into three phases;
introducing, investigating and applying and contain a wide variety
of texts including newspaper reports, expositions, time lines,
autobiographies, recounts, fiction extracts, visual texts, poems,
tables and graphs and information reports. Early on in the Big Ideas
Books students are presented with an all-encompassing unit challenge
to complete which requires them to demonstrate their engagement with
the topics discussed and show the development of their new
understandings.
This particular Shaping our Nation unit covers five main events and
influences that have shaped Australia as a nation; the Gold Rush,
Stolen Generations, World Wars and the role literature and writers
have played in shaping the national character. While well aligned
with the Australian Curriculum English strand this unit also touches
on some of the Year 5 Australian Curriculum History content. The
non-fiction topic books are fantastic in that they use real life
stories and real life people to bring the topics to life and make
the information more meaningful for students, as do many of the
texts within the Big Ideas Book. The simplicity of the fiction topic
books mean that they are accessible to students of many reading
levels. This is a notable point for this series as the varied text
types allow access for students of various learning styles and
levels.
The Big Ideas Book comes with a Student CD-Rom with a text and
interactive activity for each of the four key topics as well as
'scene setter' and 'going beyond' activities. The texts are various
formats (film, voice recording, question and answer form,
information report etc) and the interactive activities are
interesting and fun inclusive of quizzes and fill in the gaps
activities. The CD-Rom also includes three assessment tasks related
to the unit which open in Word and could be completed by students in
a digital format.
Sample Australian Curriculum correlation documents and assessment
rubrics are available
for one of the other Upper Primary Series A sets; Waterwise. These
are extracts from the Upper Primary Series A Teacher Resource Book.
This book covers all four units in this series; Waterwise, There's
more to me, Our energy choices and Shaping the nation. Also
available are Listening Post Audio CDs and BLM's.
Overall I think this particular Rigby Blueprints series could be
successfully used to scaffold a whole term literacy unit through
either whole class activities or small group work. The series
provides students with a legitimate chance to meaningfully engage
with the content of the texts and synthesise their new
understandings with existing knowledge. This is especially
achievable as the content of the unit is directly relatable to the
students' real life and provides opportunities to connect learning
with their immediate world.
Set contains:
Shaping our Nation: Big Ideas Book
Shaping our Nation Guided Reading Book
Topic Book 1: Gold and Mud (A play by Sally Odgers)
Topic Book 2: Stories of the Stolen Generations (by Marji Hill).
Topic Book 3: Maria's Journey (by Susie Brown)
Topic Book 4: We went to Gallipoli (by Pamela Rushby)
Topic Book 5: So Much to Tell Us: Amazing Australian Children's
Authors (by Dianne Irving)
Nicole Smith-Forrest