Representation in Multistage K-2: Exploring Culture through "Collecting Colour" and "Chinese New Year Colors"

This comprehensive 115+ page unit of work is designed for NSW DET Multistage K-2 teachers, offering an engaging exploration of Representation using the mentor texts Collecting Colour by Kylie Dunstan and Chinese New Year Colors by Richard Lo.

Perfect for helping students make meaningful connections between texts and their own experiences, this unit fosters an understanding of how cultural narratives and personal experiences can be represented in literature.

Key Features:

• Editable PowerPoint presentation for dynamic lesson delivery
• PDF version for easy printing and access
• Link to Google Slides for flexible and interactive learning
• Detailed teaching notes to guide lesson planning and delivery

Learning Intentions:

• Students will learn to identify and create texts that represent their own experiences and cultural backgrounds.
• They will develop an understanding of cultural representations in various texts and learn to describe significant objects from their own culture or family.

Success Criteria:

• Students can make text-to-text and text-to-self connections, identifying how their world is represented in literature.
• Use personal pronouns to describe belongings and prepositional phrases to indicate time or place.
• Verbalize adjectives and adverbs to elaborate on ideas.
• Identify noun groups and prepositional phrases in texts and use them to create written descriptions.
• Recognize cultural representations and apply personal experiences to their learning.

The unit also incorporates oral language strategies like Eye-to-Eye, Knee-to-Knee to foster student discussions about cultural representations. Additionally, it includes opportunities for differentiation and adjustments, allowing teachers to reflect on student learning and engagement.

This unit is aligned with the National Literacy Learning Progression (Version 3) and supports contextual understanding through activities and resources like the Understanding Context video from the NSW Department of Education.

Suggested Supplementary Texts:

• New Year Surprise! by Christopher Cheng and Di Wu
• Going to the Footy by Debbie Coombes
• The Color Collector by Nick Solis and Renia Metallinou
• The Katha Chest by Radhiah Chowdhury and Lavanya Naidu

Whether you are teaching in a multicultural classroom or seeking to enhance students' appreciation of diverse cultures, this unit will inspire and support students as they explore the rich diversity of their world through storytelling and cultural representation.

Attribution is given to: © State of New South Wales (Department of Education), 2023.