Languages

Over the past few months, students have taken their Japanese studies to new heights incorporating household items into their learning.

Year 8s were set a task to create hiragana characters (basic Japanese script) with whatever items they could find at home. Their creativity knew no bounds and characters were made out of spaghetti, tea towels, string, chocolates, TV remotes, jewellery, shells and much more.

Meanwhile, Year 9 students labelled items around the house in hiragana and katakana (script for foreign words) and participated in online treasure hunts during their Zoom lessons, which required team work and decoding skills. The Year 10 students were sent on a treasure hunt, looking for items at home using a list written in katakana and also to see if they could find items at home that looked like the kanji (picture characters) they have been studying.

Kirsten Binnie
Leader of Learning - Languages

Sharing culture through storytelling

This term our Year 9 Japanese class is investigating how diverse cultures and histories are communicated through storytelling. They are exploring a range of traditional Japanese folktales as well as local indigenous dreamtime stories - looking for similarities and differences and identifying the lessons within them. This unit has been designed to provide our students with opportunities to develop understanding of and respect for different cultures and languages, including that of our traditional owners of Country. 

To launch our unit, we were lucky enough to have Aunty Vicki Filewood join us to share some local Gumbaynggirr Dreamtime stories that have special significance to her and her elders. We learned how  dreamtime stories often explain how the country, animals and people came to be as they are - the stories tell of how the land was made first and the language was given to the land. It was after that, that the people arrived on the land. We learned that each nation has their own special words for ‘God’ ‘Mother’ and ‘Son’ and were intrigued by the parallels between our Christian beliefs around creation and the local Gumbaynggirr creation story.

We heard about how the sea is the totem of the Gumbaynggirr nation and the deep connection the people of this nation have with the sea and the land, and their sense of responsibility for looking after their environment which stems from this spiritual connection. 

Aunty Vicki shared a special story about the dolphin dreaming and her memories of going fishing with her family. She remembers her grandmother singing to the dolphins, who they believe are their ancestors who choose to live at sea, and the dolphins herding the fish into their nets.

We learned how stories such as ‘How the Koala lost its tail’ provided valuable life lessons in character values about finding ways to be resourceful, sharing good fortune, and being fair with others.

Students will continue to explore dreamtime stories and learn about the Japanese art of manga drawing throughout this unit. It is our hope that our students will be able to share their knowledge of local dreamtime stories with visiting Japanese students in the future through their own manga, which will be dreamtime stories translated into Japanese.