Connecting to prior knowledge
For teachers
Take time to explore and investigate the Growing Up Yolŋu website. It is not necessarily child friendly but will inform your own knowledge and perspectives on the topic presented in the book about Aboriginal cultural practices in child rearing.
The importance of connection to land, culture and family are expressed and explained. Also important is the continuing nature of Aboriginal cultural practices. Aboriginal cultures are not just something that happened a long time ago. Sometimes there may be a confusion or misunderstanding between ‘traditional’ culture and contemporary Indigenous identity.
During this unit learning will focus on ‘culture’. It is important that you understand what culture is, how it is defined, and how it should be applied during lessons. At times it may be difficult to provide Australian non-Indigenous examples. This is because when a culture is dominant and ‘normalised’ it can become invisible to members of that dominant culture. This can be explained by the following quote:
In Australia … ‘White Anglo-Australian cultural and racial dominance’ [is] the ‘invisible omnipresent norm’. It is rarely interrogated or seen as a difference, instead it is the benchmark by which differences from that norm are measured, valued and often ignored (Durey, 2015, p. 191).
Before reading
Students predict from the cover what Jasmine Seymour’s book Baby Business will be about, and who the major characters will be. Ask students to turn to a partner and share their ideas about the theme of the story.
Ask them to think about what a baby and a business might have in common. Might the word ‘business’ have more than one meaning? Ask students to think about the visual clues on the cover, including the people, the relationship between the people, the font choice (which is lower case and informal), and the green background. The green background is particularly important. Ask students where they have seen this particular colour green before.
Join pairs together to make groups of four and share again. Prompt students to ask questions of each other.
Distribute paper and pens. Still in groups of four, ask the students to brainstorm possible vocabulary they think they might encounter.
After reading
Read Baby Business aloud, pausing on each page so students can take in the illustrations and share their thoughts.
Read through the Darug words on the last page. As you discuss each word and its translation, record the students’ thoughts so they are easily seen.
Re-read the book now that these words and their translations have been revealed.
Ask students to assess whether their predictions about the content, the meaning of the title and the significance of the colour were correct. What surprised them? Does the predicted vocabulary still apply? What other words could be added?
You can provide more contextual knowledge by posing the following questions and discussing possible answers.
- Who helps the mothers have their babies?
- Why should we know this?
- What is the author’s purpose for writing a book called Baby Business?
Following on from this discussion, provide information about the length of time that First Nations cultures have thrived in Australia (more than 60,000 years) and connect the idea of history with tradition.
Also discuss connection to Country and the importance of acknowledging Country. Ask a student to deliver an acknowledgment of Country for the land on which the discussion is taking place.
Exploring the text in context of our community, school and ‘me’
Invite students to discuss their own culture and the cultural traditions that happen when there is a new baby. Ask students to ask their parents for a photo of themselves as a baby, or one that shows a family celebration that included them as a baby. Celebrate the diversity in this task.
Explore this theme in some detail with comparisons. Students may use a Venn diagram to compare and contrast traditions. Instead of highlighting difference and stopping at that, make a point of then finding similarity. What are we as people all doing when a baby is born?
NOTE: There are some fun and interesting traditions that may be raised here, but be careful when searching the topic online with the class, as you may come across references to circumcision. Be aware of this possibility and review any websites you plan to display in advance.
Rich assessment task
Guide students to orally reflect on learning by asking some questions and recording the responses for later. It will be important to return to these questions to confirm and clarify ideas after more interaction with the text.
- What is the big idea in this book?
- Give two or three contributing ideas.
- Who are the important characters?
- What is the significance of the bees?
- What is a totem?
- Are the bees present in the moment, or is the author trying to convey something else?
Additionally:
- List any ideas or events you are wondering about.
- Provide one question you would like answered.
Responding to the text
Culture is very strongly linked to language. Words used about special times and celebrations are important. Invite students to investigate the Darug words used in the story and search for similar words from their local language group. Guide a class discussion explaining that a word or sign can carry different weight in different cultural contexts (for example, that particular respect is due to some people and creatures) and that stories can be passed on to teach us how to live within the custom or lore.
Demonstrate the link between stories, culture and behaviours by watching a Dreaming story told by Darug man Paul Teerman.
The class could invite a representative from your local Aboriginal community to visit and talk about babies and children, and teach some words in their language. It is necessary to understand the diversity of First Nations peoples and make the lesson locally relevant and appropriate. Students can begin this process by identifying their local language group (use the AIATSIS or Gambay map) and the Traditional Custodians of the land on which the school is built on.
Afterwards, ask students to reflect on what they learnt from the talk about cultural practices. Record via a class mind map, showing how some observations are linked. If this is the students’ first attempt at a linked mind map, they may need guidance to make the connections across concepts. Introduce the notion of solid lines for strong connections and dotted lines for weak connections.
Add the cultural practices described in the text.
Allow students to have another look at the images in the text and comment on what they convey without the need for words. This would be best done in small groups using multiple copies of the text.
The significance of the bees as the baby’s totem might be an important part of this discussion.
Exploring plot, character, setting and theme
Invite students to have a class discussion about the purpose of the story by asking the following questions. Record the discussion as a brainstorm on the board.
| Purpose | What is the purpose of the story?
What is happening in the story? |
| Characters | Who are the characters? Does each character play a different role?
Why do some characters have names and others don’t? Discuss the way the characters’ names are written with capital letters and are not so much personal names but designations of relationship, e.g. Nanna, Aunties, Mudjin (family), Gurung (child). Why aren’t the characters introduced by their personal name? Sometimes they are called ‘women and children’ and sometimes the relational form of address is used. Why is that? The use of relational forms of address tells us a lot about the importance of relationships in First Nations cultures. Is Nura (Country) fulfilling the role of a character in this text? |
| Themes | What are the themes of the story? Possible answers include:
How are each of these themes represented in the story? |
Rich assessment task
Ask students to reflect on the sum of their own learning in this section, including exploring the feelings and personal aspects of the story and the importance of caring and family.
Support students to complete a summary chart (PDF, 149KB) showing learning and links between concepts. Encourage students to colour-code their completed summary chart to find links.
Examining text structure and organisation
Ask the students how the text is organised.
Is it a narrative (story)? It has features of a narrative such as a beginning, middle, an event and a conclusion. Ask students to map this narrative ‘arc’ in the text.
How is this text different to a narrative? It is different because it offers factual information and includes some procedural text within.
Identify the text type with the students (i.e. factual narrative) by listing the text features and the purpose (function) of the writing on each page. Look for where the pages seem to ‘shift gears’ or do another job (function).
| Spread 1 | A procedure, because the sentence commences with a verb and is an instruction |
| Spread 2 | Recount of fact |
| Spread 3 | A procedure (listing the ingredients) and an information text (giving information about the leaves) |
| Spread 4 | Factual information |
| Spread 5 | A procedure that tells what to do |
| Spread 6 | A procedure that tells what to do; commences with verbs (‘keep’, ‘care’) |
| Spread 7 | A procedure that tells what to do; commences with verbs (‘take’, ‘give back’, ‘help’) |
| Spread 8 | A procedure that tells what to do, commencing with verbs (‘keep’), and some information about language (‘our words’) |
| Spread 9 | A procedure that tells what to do, commencing with verbs (‘listen’, ‘warm’, ‘must’), and some information about the totem |
| Spread 10 | A procedure that tells what to do; commences with a verb (‘let’) |
| Spread 11 | Information, i.e. rules about what belongs and does not belong |
Reread the story to the class and pause if necessary to encourage students to notice and identify features.
Students should develop an understanding of how different types of texts vary in their use of language, depending on their purpose and context (e.g. tense and types of sentences). We have already explored the purpose of the text; what else can be determined? For example, when Aboriginal authors write, they can explain elements of their culture. Ask students if they know any other texts by Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander authors (see Reading Australia’s First Nations texts archive). You can read some to the class and discuss the language choices (e.g. how tenses and different sentence structures are used).
Jasmine Seymour is the author and illustrator. She’s been quite deliberate with the way she’s drawn each page. Allow the students to explore the staging and framing of one double-page spread. Be sure to include spread 3 as it has a point of difference to all the others.
Ask the students to select a different double-page spread and, in small groups, enact the visual staging features. Allow the students to take a series of photos of each enactment: a top-down view, eye level view and a bottom-up view.
Return to the book and determine whether Seymour drew the visuals top-down, at eye level or bottom-up. All the images, except spread 3, are bottom-up. Discuss how Seymour was situating the reader as a child observing the events. In grammar terms, we call this an offer or an invitation. Discuss that the reader needed to be an ‘imagined’ child because only women and children participate in baby business.
Examining grammar and vocabulary
Use passages from other First Nations texts (or texts you have read in class) and ask the students to identify descriptive language. Examples of descriptive language are:
- nouns and adjectives
- verbs and adverbs
- adjectival phrases
- adverbial phrases
- common nouns, personal pronouns and proper nouns.
Explore the language of Baby Business in more detail by learning about the use of anaphora.
Anaphora is when a theme or concept is stressed through repetition at the beginning of successive clauses. In Baby Business, Seymour repeats the word ‘warm’. Ask the class to think about the use of repetition in the text to consider the reason that the author has used this strategy.
Return to a question from the Responding section (under Exploring Plot, Character, Setting and Theme):
Is Nura (Country) fulfilling the role of a character in this text?
Work through the text and ask the students to find all the sentences that mention or reference Nura or Country. There are seven in total:
- Warm smoke from the fire on your feet to connect you to Country.
- Keep your Mudjin and Country close to your heart.
- Care for Country as it cares for you.
- Give back what you can and help your Mudjin and Nura when they need it.
- Let your life begin on Nura.
- Remember it does not belong to us.
- We belong to Country.
NOTE: Students may need to be prompted to realise that sentences 3 and 6 use the pronoun ‘it’ to refer to Country.
Once the whole class has helped to identify the seven sentences, systematically work through each sentence and identify the verb that relates to Nura or Country (underlined above). Discuss how the character of Nura or Country is associated with different processes such as doing (‘to connect’, ‘keep’, ‘care’, ‘give back’, ‘help’, ‘need’, ‘let begin’) and relating (‘does not belong’, ‘belong’). Nura or Country is constructed as active (doing verbs) and relating to senses of belonging. These are traits of something that is living.
Students now list the Darug words used (PDF, 140KB) and their English equivalent. What types of words are they (e.g. nouns, adjectives)?
Guide a class discussion about how the words set the tone of the text. What is the tone of Baby Business?
Rich assessment task
Students reflect and comment on the learning in the text. What have they learnt from reading Baby Business? Prompt them to focus on the topic of babies, child rearing and cultural celebrations.
Students should search for other books with similar topics and record them in a reading log. After a whole class demonstration, students use a Venn diagram to compare Baby Business with a text of their choosing.
Story mapping
Students map out the procedure of the story. This could be done pictorially.
Compare students’ work to the illustrations in the book. Discuss how particular aspects of the story have been represented as images, remembering the lesson on bottom-up drawings to show the relationship between the imagined child reader and the characters in the factual narrative (Examining > Examining Text Structure and Organisation). Why did these aspects get chosen?
Creation of literature
Students discuss other forms of ‘baby’ literature, e.g. lullabies, nursery rhymes, and short form poetry such as haiku.
Students practise writing a ‘baby’ haiku together, stressing the importance of structure in the text. Then, each student will write their own haiku to create a class anthology.
Ask students to see if any words in their poem could be replaced by the Darug words they have learned from Baby Business.
Rich assessment task
Recognising our own cultures and cultural practices is important, especially when there are opportunities to celebrate them.
Students write their own text based on one of their own cultural activities. Use the factual narrative format as modeled by Baby Business. Include important aspects that make the activity culturally appropriate. Think of the language used and the character roles. Ask students if they can substitute any of the words for words from a language from their own cultural heritage.
Encourage the students to use family photos to add to their text.
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