In English Inquiry (Line 4), we have been focusing on how songs make meaning. Commencing with mind-maps to record our discussions about how and why humans make music, the class then used those maps to support writing longer texts, which included a self-interview about our personal relationship to songs and a graphic essay. Along with this, we have annotated songs, pulling apart their structure and identifying specific language features. There has been an emphasis on handwriting as research shows this helps memory and comprehension.

We have also sought to expand our vocabulary around sound and movement by listening to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” and watching a video of starlings in flight, then using word-banks of verbs and adjectives to describe these spectacular visuals and sounds in our writing. Helping us see the power of music in other people’s lives, we have read 'Rolling Stone' Magazine’s article about Taylor Swift’s “Era’s Tour,” the Beatles’ last ever song release and Eminem’s rags to riches life story. Through listening to Eminem’s song “Mockingbird,” which has imbedded within it an 1800s lullaby by the same name, we understood the concept of intertextuality. Students have identified that the backbone of song writing is poetry and so we read Kobe Bryant’s poem “Dear Basketball” to inspire our own poetic writings about places, people and the things we love.