Scrapbook Project - Kinship

Year 7 / 8
English / Visual Arts

Suggested duration: Two lessons

Summary

In this activity, students will learn about the importance of kinship ties among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples using The Little Red Yellow Black Book. Students will use what they learn as inspiration to create their own family scrapbook page. Students will create an informative text incorporating text and graphics to represent their ideas. This project requires access to word processing and image manipulation software, such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft PowerPoint or the Adobe Creative Suite.

Kinship is the glue that holds Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander societies together. It locates all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in networks of belonging and webs of relationships that incorporate people, places, plants, animals and ancestors. Kinship systems vary from place to place, as do kin terms. It is not possible to explain all the complexities and diversities across Australia in a single book. (The Little Red Yellow Black Book, p. 25)

Learning outcomes

• Students will create a scrapbook page that represents their family, drawing on the information about kinship and family from their readings.
• Students will demonstrate the use of  imaginative, informative and persuasive devices in their scrapbook page to convey meaning

Australian Curriculum content descriptions

Year 7 English

• Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts, selecting aspects of subject matter and particular language, visual, and audio features to convey information and ideas (ACELY1725).
• Use a range of software, including word processing programs, to confidently create, edit and publish written and multimodal texts (ACELY1728).

Year 8 English

• Create imaginative, informative and persuasive texts that raise issues, report events and advance opinions, using deliberate language and textual choices, and including digital elements as appropriate (ACELY1736).
• Use a range of software, including word processing programs, to create, edit and publish texts imaginatively (ACELY1738).

Years 7 and 8 Visual Arts

• Practise techniques and processes to enhance representation of ideas in their art making (ACAVAM121).

Provisions for differentiation

Learning support

Students with special learning needs may elect to work in partnerships with peers or a learning support teacher.

Extension

Students could create additional scrapbooking pages and put them together by making a cardboard cover and a binding sewn with string.

Resources

• Copy of the Assignment sheet (PDF)
• Scissors
• Glue sticks
• Sticky tape
• Paper clips
• Blank A4 copy paper
• Pencils and erasers
• A selection of coloured cardstock, paper, printed paper, wrapping paper or specialty scrapbooking cardstock or paper in a variety of colours and designs
• Access to computers and word processing and image manipulation software, such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft PowerPoint or the Adobe Creative Suite.
• Colour printer (to print out the digital map image and photos)
• The Little Red Yellow Black Book - An introduction to Indigenous Australia (4th edition), `Who We Are`, Aboriginal Studies Press, AIATSIS, Canberra, 2018.

For teachers

Ensure that the guidance notes included in The Little Red Yellow Black Book teacher resource have been considered.

Vocabulary

• Kinship
• Milestones

Preparation: Show students an example of a scrapbook page which models the task. Explain and model the devices they need to include and demonstrate. There are pictures of scrapbook pages of other topics online.

Step 1.

Collect the following materials for students to use:

• a selection of coloured cardstock, paper, printed paper, wrapping paper or specialty scrapbooking cardstock or 
• paper in a variety of colours and designs
• scissors
• glue sticks
• sticky tape
• paper clips
• blank A4 copy paper
• pencils and erasers

Optional extras:

• washi tape (a low adhesive paper tape ideal for scrapbooking)
• decorative cut-outs
• decorative paper clips
• adhesive rhinestones
• glitter
• stickers

Step 2.

Refer to pages 25-29 of The Little Red Yellow Black Book about family and kinship. Explain to students the concept of kinship and emphasise the fact that family is a vital aspect of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.

Step 3.

Talk about the fact that kinship ties locate people in relation to each other and may extend beyond relatives such as your brother, sister, mother or father. Make a list as the class discusses the various aspects of family life that revolve around family ties and the ways in which the close relationships in families are expressed. The list may include personal relationships, conversations, journeys taken to special places, eating together, home life, special celebrations, going through tragedies together, and milestones in growing up, marriages, births and losses of loved ones.

Step 4.

Discuss ways in which some of these elements of family life might be represented in pictorial and textual form, without the use of photos of people. For example, colours and shapes may be used symbolically; lines between photos of places and objects may represent relationships or the passage of time; pictures of places or things may be more effective than textual descriptions.

Discuss the idea that photos of real people are only one means of describing, remembering or representing them. Ask students for their ideas on how we can represent people other than by using photos.

Step 5.

Distribute the Assignment sheet and one sheet of A4 copy paper to students.

Step 6.

Ask students to make a list of the elements and the number of those elements that they would like to include in their final piece. They should make their list on one side of the A4 sheet. Students are not to use photographs of people in their family. Any real photos should be of places, homes, objects or other items associated with their family life, but not real people, living or dead.

Step 7.

Ask students to sketch out a design for their Scrapbooking page on the A4 sheet of blank paper, keeping these aims in mind:

• Your aim is to create a page that represents your family without using photos of the people in it.
• It may include photos but not of people. Your design should also contain symbolic, rather than just literal, information about your family. For example, what colours could be used to represent aspects of your family’s life? If they enjoy activities like going to the beach, for example, the colours blue and yellow could be used to convey a beach feel.
• Think about the interplay between line, colour and shape.
• Consider how you will mix text and images to shape the meaning of your work.

Assessment ideas

• Present Scrapbook page to the class
• Self and/or Peer assessment