Description

Explore Visual Grammar Through Literature: A Lesson Using Listen by Duncan Smith and Nicole Godwin

This lesson plan is designed to teach students about gaze types and imperative verbs through the powerful picture book Listen, written by Duncan Smith and Nicole Godwin, beautifully illustrated by Jandamarra Cadd.

Focusing on the book’s rich visual grammar, the lesson unpacks how gaze is used to guide and captivate the viewer’s attention—an essential technique in visual literacy. It also explores how these visual cues are reinforced through the author’s use of imperative verbs, creating an interplay between image and text. This combination opens up opportunities to investigate meaning-making.

Aligned with the Australian Curriculum: English Version 9 outcomes for Foundation to Year 6, this lesson provides differentiated strategies to support junior and senior students. It addresses visual language outcomes across year levels, with guidance for adapting the content to suit your classroom needs.

The comprehensive lesson plan includes:

Step-by-step teacher instructions for an intentional and scaffolded learning sequence
Modelling prompts to support classroom discussion and guided analysis
A shared group experience to build collective understanding
Independent practice tasks to consolidate learning
A reflective activity to encourage synthesis
A definition resource to scaffold the learning process

Grounded in the gradual release of responsibility model and the deconstructing–reconstructing teaching and learning cycle, this lesson is ideal for building students’ visual literacy, grammar knowledge, and appreciation for multimodal texts.