Enrichment English: Critical & Creative Literacies

Unit 2: The Unheard and Overlooked

Which stories are often not told? Our awareness and understanding of social and political issues is often influenced by our exposure to mass media, but this has its problems and limitations. In this unit, students will explore the prevalence of dominant narratives which prioritise and promote certain stories, whilst relegating others. They will engage with a range of artists and visual storytellers, including photographers Alex Chan and Hassaan Gondal, muralists Banksy and Shamsia Hassani, and visual artist Jacob Lawrence, who represent the stories and perspectives of people and communities in our global world whose stories are, all too often, unheard. The first outcome of this unit will be to brainstorm a topic that is often unheard in global news and create a political cartoon to present this topic. The rubric focus will be AO5 Creative Production: giving them scope to demonstrate insight and imagination and AO2 Analysis and Evaluation: giving the students opportunity to justify their visual choices as a form of communication.

We will eventually refine our lens and look at migration in particular, exploring the dominant narratives around this and how this has evolved over time. Here, students will engage with conceptual questions such as: How does the mass media influence our exposure to a topic and what are the limitations? To develop their critical thinking, students will be reading the graphic novel, When Stars Are Scattered by Omar Mohamed and Victoria Jamieson and/or the novel The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri to promote narratives around migration that are often unheard. The summative outcome of this unit will be a paired presentation on a graphic novel of their choice: They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Welcome to the New World by Jake Halpern or The Arab of the Future by Riad Sattouf - all sharing diverse perspectives of migrations in our global world. This summative task will provide the students with the opportunity to transfer and apply their critical thinking and skills acquired in this unit in a more independent way.

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