Why Wayang?
As an organisational focus for language learning, wayang – or shadow puppetry – provides wonderful opportunities for cross-curricular links with English and the Arts. Indonesian teacher Jeremy Snyder, describes two Year 9 units of inquiry that he designed around the concept of wayang.
Earlier in the year, Jeremy, a graduate teacher of Drama and Indonesian at Peter Moyes Anglican Community School, attended a two-day AISWA “Principles and Practice” workshop. Participants were encouraged to go beyond a thematic approach to programming, and explore organisation foci that emphasised in particular, cross-curricular concepts and the study of a text (or text types), to foster deep learning. For Jeremy, the result was the development of two sequenced units of inquiry around the concept of wayang, which is a traditional, but dynamic, form of media from Indonesia.
Watch the video where Jeremy describes the process of designing and implementing the units with his Year 9 class. He uses a Pecha Kucha style of presenting, using 20 slides each displayed for 20 seconds, as a backdrop. For this presentation he won an award for the best Pecha Kucha at the recent Modern Language Teachers’ Association WA Conference at Murdoch University. AISWA would like to congratulate Jeremy and thank him for sharing his great ideas with the wider teaching community.
