Learning Never Stops: Why I'm a massive Shaun Tan fan.

Oh my goodness. I'm getting through to them!

I've been dying to study a Shaun Tan with my munchkins for ages, and when I finally found out we'd be looking at the Stolen Generation and perspectives on Australian History, I emailed my supervisor halfway through the summer holidays and begged her to let us do John Marsden's 'The Rabbits'.

(If you don't know who Shaun Tan is, your mind is about to be blown. Check him out here.)

For me, Shaun Tan's work is the epitome of visual literacy. A renowned artist in his own right, Tan creates works of such incredible depth and complexity that they can be studied for hours by even young students.

(My Year 4s and 5s sat there quite happily discussing a double page for AN HOUR without beginning to get restless. They even tried to stay in at lunch so they could keep talking about it!)

There is so many different ways you can study a Shun Tan book, which is why it lends itself so nicely to visual literacy - the nuances of both the visual and literary aspects of the texts help the reader delve deeply into the text and gain a true understanding of underlying themes.

Needless to say, I'm a Shaun Tan nut. My kidlets are becoming Tan fans too.

Never have I seen a group of students so engaged with a high level text. We were looking at the double page below today (this is our second week on the text, and we've only reached the 3rd double page because we spend so much time making connections and asking deep thinking questions - resulting in me sitting, mouth agape while my 'low' students engage with the text on a stage appropriate level).

In fact, I look a little something like this:

<-------- This is my 'omgmystudentsaredeepthinking' happy face