Stolen Girl

Connecting to prior knowledge

NOTE: It is important that you have a robust understanding of Aboriginal peoples and cultures, including Aboriginal perspectives on Australian history and the continuing impacts of colonisation. Reconciliation Australia offers educational resources, including the Narragunnawali program, while Bringing Them Home and Australians Together offer important information to support the teaching of this unit. Other useful websites are listed under More Resources.

Students brainstorm words that represent feelings evoked when they think of their home. Avoid discussing the physical aspects of the home as this has the potential to induce ‘shame’ in some students.

• Where is their home?
• What does it feel like?
• What are the feelings you have when you think of your home?
• What important events have happened in your home?

In groups, students create a word cloud and compare.

Now ask the class:

What is the difference between a house and a home?

Students may comment on home being a place of love and joy and perhaps a refuge. Guide the discussion around the concept of home rather than bricks and mortar and decorating.

Discuss and create a Venn diagram as a class. Explore how both words are used in the text. Discuss why the author has used the words ‘house’ and ‘home’ as she has.

Place the completed diagram on a themed wall, which will be built on and revisited throughout the unit.

(AC9E4LY02)

Exploring the text in context of our community, school and ‘me’

Before introducing the book, deliver an Acknowledgement of Country. Discuss its purpose. Find out the name of the Country on which your school is located (the Map of Indigenous Australia or First Languages Map will come in handy here). Discuss some local places that have Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander names and what those names mean.

Introduce Stolen Girl written by Trina Saffioti and illustrated by Norma MacDonald. Give each student a sticky note to record words or feelings that come to mind as they listen to the story. Now read the text aloud.

Afterwards, read the author information at the back of the book and ask:

Why do you think the authors wrote this story?

Invite students to share the initial feelings and/or words they recorded when listening to Stolen Girl.

Select an appropriate story from Australians Together, Stolen Generations Testimonies, Bringing Them Home or The Healing Foundation to share with students to prompt a discussion about the Stolen Generations. After viewing and a pair-share, come together as a whole class to discuss what happened in the story.

List facts and feelings on the board/chart paper or in students’ books. Use the following prompt in the discussion:

How would you feel if this happened to you?

Refer back to the author’s notes at the beginning of Stolen Girl directing attention to p. 8 (the girl in the government car). Encourage the discussion around how she might be feeling at this point in time and the image including the view from the car windows.

Provide copies of the book for students to re-read the story and then in small groups recount what they have learnt about the Stolen Generations. Students write their knowledge on a card and add it to the themed wall.

Invite students to share what they know about First Nations cultures in Australia. Questions for class and group discussion include:

• Where did the girl live?
• Which place was a house and which place was a home?
• What is the significance of home and Country to Aboriginal people?

Record responses either in written form or on an iPad.

Re-visit what you have learned about the Stolen Generations in preparation for the Rich Assessment Task. Invite students to take personal notes. The following websites may be useful:

• AIATSIS – The Stolen Generations
• Common Ground – The Stolen Generations
• SBS English – Who are the Stolen Generations?
• Behind the News – Stolen Generations
• The Healing Foundation – Who are the Stolen Generations?

(AC9E4LA02)   (AC9E4LE01)

Rich assessment task

Before beginning, check to see if students are familiar with writing opinion. If not, provide some mentor texts that are on topic and appropriate for this age group. Identify the language features that need to be highlighted so the students know about the criteria for success. Focus on the use of language of opinion.

Students write an opinion piece expressing what they have learned so far about the Stolen Generation, using information from websites deemed suitable by the teacher, class discussions, and the book Stolen Girl (including the author’s notes).

The use of thinking verbs such as ‘I believe’/’I think’ is a criteria for this task.

Invite students to volunteer to read their opinions to the class. Before the students read to their peers, discuss respect for personal opinions.

(AC9E4LA03)   (AC9E4LY06)

Responding to the text

Students revisit the themed wall and the previous Rich Assessment Task.

Invite students to re-read Stolen Girl and discuss the narrative structure and how it tells the story. Point out that this is a fictionalised version of the story of the Stolen Generations.

Students work in groups to create a chart comparing the girl’s life with her mother and her life in the government institution. Invite the groups to report to the whole class, pointing out important comparison points. Work is displayed.

(AC9E4LA03)   (AC9E4LE02)   (AC9E4LY05)

Exploring plot, character, setting and theme

Engage the class in discussion by asking:

What is the girl’s name?

Exploration of the text will reveal the girl is only known as ‘she’. Ask:

• Why has the author used this strategy?
• Why might she be nameless?
• How do you feel when someone uses your name compared to calling out ‘hey you’ or her or she?
• Are names part of our identify? Has ‘she’ lost her identity in this Government facility?

Guide the discussion around how someone’s name is closely linked with identity. Ask:

What if your name and identity was stolen from you?

(AC9E4LE02)

Using the worksheet provided (PDF, 142KB), invite students to explore the text and comment on the framing, illustrations and elements (e.g. salience) of the images.

• How does framing and visual composition help to tell the story?
• What techniques has the illustrator used to enhance or challenge the text?

(AC9E4LA10)

As a class, watch former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations. To prepare for the viewing, ask the students to brainstorm the words that they think Rudd might use in his speech.

After viewing, allow students to spend a few quiet moments reflecting on what they heard before writing down their initial reactions and sharing with a partner.

Form small groups and ask students to share the list of words they made prior to viewing, then list words they are thinking about after hearing the speech.

View the speech again and this time ask students to write down technical words that Rudd uses for later discussion. Also talk about the metaphors Rudd uses: ‘blemished chapter’, ‘healing of the nation’, ‘new page’, ‘close the gap’. View the transcription, this time noting what is literal (on the page) and what can be inferred. Set up grand conversation circles to identify how Rudd uses evaluative language and to what effect.

Students relate the speech to the text and re-read with this knowledge. Discuss using the questions below as prompts:

• When did this occur?
• Why was this apology considered an important step towards reconciliation?

(AC9E4LA03)   (AC9E4LY05)

Rich assessment task

Discuss p. 2, showing the girls eating breakfast in the facility, and compare this to p. 4, showing the mother and daughter eating breakfast on their veranda. Refer back to teaching point revising the visual features in a text. Discuss the differences between what is said and how the illustrations have been done.

With this in mind, ask students to draw or paint their understanding of the girl with her mother and contrasting that with the government facility in a split page arrangement.

Ask students to label the two images to highlight the different situations the girl finds herself in (e.g. happy/sad, frightened/comforted, lonely/loved, home/dormitory, Country/children’s home, family/strangers).

(AC9E4LY05)

Examining text structure and organisation

Using the scaffold provided (PDF, 96KB), students revisit the structure of a narrative and apply it to Stolen Girl.

(AC9E4LA03)

Examining grammar and vocabulary

Students read the text and find any words that describe the girl’s life with her mother and community, e.g. Elder, sugar bag. Research these words as they relate to Australian and/or Aboriginal histories. Words can be written on cards and illustrated, then added to the themed wall.

The contraction ‘ain’t’ might be noted. Discuss what it means in the context of the sentence on p. 11. Challenge students to find other uses of the word ‘ain’t’ and discuss what ‘ain’t’ means in the various contexts it is found. ‘Ain’t’ does not have one set meaning.

Now explore saying verbs throughout the book. Ask students to audit which participants/characters get to use saying verbs and under what conditions. The main character is silent for most of the book. Identify when she gets to speak and to whom she speaks. Is this a deliberate authorial choice by Saffioti?

Now look at verb use on pp. 1 and 2 (present tense) and compare that with verb use on pp. 3 and 6 (past tense). What is the effect of these choices for verb tense?

(AC9E4LA03)   (AC9E4LA11)

Lead students to revise or learn how to write an acrostic poem using words from the theme wall. Offer the scaffold (PDF, 101KB).

View and discuss the 8 Aboriginal Ways of Learning (Koori Curriculum has a useful blog post about this). How is this in conflict with the way the girl in Stolen Girl was made to live? After some small group discussion, discuss as a whole class.

Commence a whole-class comparison chart. Invite students to work in pairs to complete the pair-share scaffold (PDF, 109KB), then contribute ideas to the whole-class chart. Students can then work individually on a personal scaffold.

(AC9E4LY02)   (AC9E4LY05)

Rich assessment task

Play the trailer or a short extract from Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) showing the children living in the government facility.

Students create a movie strip (PDF, 93KB), showing the events in the trailer/clip alongside scenes from Stolen Girl.

Make sure each scene is labelled. The scaffold could be enlarged to allow for detailed illustrations and captions.

(AC9E4LY05)

Invite students to re-read Stolen Girl. Introduce other texts with a similar theme such as Sister Heart* by Sally Morgan or Took the Children Away* by Archie Roach, illustrated by Ruby Hunter.

As a class quickly revisit the structure of a narrative. Then discuss play scripts and how to adapt the text of Stolen Girl into a readers’ theatre script.

Form four groups and give each group a section of the book:

1. pp. 1–6
2. pp. 7–12
3. pp. 13–20
4. pp. 21–31

In their groups, students write a readers’ theatre script to show their interpretation of the text. Students perform their readers’ theatre for each other over a week.

Have students complete a feedback scaffold (PDF, 97KB) to provide feedback and affirm each other.

(AC9E4LE05)   (AC9E4LY07)

Rich assessment task

Using the narrative structure, students write a sequel documenting the girl’s return to her mother and Country after she runs away from the government facility. Provide the blurb on the back of Stolen Girl as a starting point.

The book is presented in an accordion style to be shared in class after assessment.

Students may do this task in two stages:

1. draft and write their book (length depending on students level of attainment).
2. students divide their story into pages to transfer to the accordion book and illustrate the pages.

(AC9E4LE05)   (AC9E4LY07)