Assessment 2B Reflection.

Storyboard for Spirited away

Question: Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away draws on Japanese culture and imagery to appeal to
Japanese audiences. What aspects of the characters both spiritual and human in the bathhouse
relate to Japanese culture either past or present? In your response think about character
interactions such as Chihiro being courageous and brave and her parents disrespectful and
gluttonous.

You are to produce up to a 5 minute multimodal presentation on the question.

My first aims were to set out a script that addressed a focus on these main subjects of past vs
present, modernism vs conventionalism and capitalism vs traditionalism. These are all very huge and
nuanced topics that could each be their own presentation but I set about writing this way to just get
my ideas onto paper. Working in this way I have developed a sense for which argument I thought
was strongest and then placing my focus onto that. The story is set in two worlds, spirit and reality
which lends itself to two competing ideals. This is very similar to the Alice in Wonderland story
concept where ideas can be explored though a fantasy setting. Fantasy setting are useful to explore
themes in abstract ways, allowing for the internal struggle to be presented externally. For example
in the movie the girl Chihiro respect for tradition by being weary of the theme park and her parents
brushing over it and literally turning into pigs. It is obvious that Miyazaki has an agenda that the
present day Japanese culture is missing something from its modernisation. He is worried that
Japanese children are becoming too spoiled and that they lack independence, hence why he wanted
to portray a courageous and independent child juxtaposing that idea. This is a theme constantly
reflected within her adventures at the bathhouse. The Bathhouse is certainly used as a tool to reflect
traditional Japanese culture with food, clothing and religious imagery just as the parents through
their clothing and German car reflect the outside influence on Japan. Looking at characters theme
and setting and combined with my own research on Japan I was able to create the artefact which
would help my students in their learning of this unit.

The artefact is something that I could use for my upcoming year 9 classroom in my practicum, the
unit is called adventures in Asia where students will be going through multiple examples of literature
from Japanese culture. The focus of this particular artefact will be based on the movie that my
students will be experiencing, Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki. The reason for the creation of this
artefact is to provide an exemplar example to students for their assessment task on this part of the
unit. Students are given an idea of what I am looking for and what they could consider a completed
piece of work. The artefact achieves this by not only drawing attention to what is expected but also
explaining the decision choices of the piece of work. I also found the building of my own artefact
useful in understanding what I should expect from my students in a frame time. It is unreasonable to
expect something elaborate and therefore the expectation of creativity comes through how the
work is presented and analysis. Presenting a point creatively or brining up an unexpected point
would be worth more to the overall mark than a well-designed video.

The level of analysis performed in my artefact has been approached in the sense of
providing an example of the amount of depth that I would expect of stage 5 English class. In my
process of designing this piece I discovered it is quite difficult to produce a deep analysis based on
memory without notes, this would be significant to students as it would be very necessary that
throughout the unit I provide plenty of resources and work which they can take home and use as a
physical resource before attempting this assessment. Examples of this tangible evidence would be
character profiles, scene analysis notes, storyboarding for scenes students found important,
recording challenges and resolutions in character growth sheets. Each piece of physical work would
be useful for students when creating their overall presentation on the unit through reminders of
their own words in notes. Another important step for my process is creating is to script first and
design later, by knowing what I am aiming to talk about and the direction I wish to take my analysis I
am able to better design my work to reflect my words. For the case of my students my example
encourages railroading my students into comprehensive steps in addressing this piece of work. Step
one, students are to create a script for their work. Two, focus on creating a story board either
through drawing the images of the analysis or using draft images from the internet. Three, record
and finalise design of the assessment. Final, animate or add finishing flourishes. Giving students
simple direction can help to simplify the task with the overall workload seeming less.

The syllabus dot points that I am attempting to cover through this task and unit are: EN5-2A,
EN5-3B, EN5-5C, EN5-7D, EN5-8D, EN5-9E. To solidify expectations of the assessment task specific
leading questions would be asked or presented to the students. An example of a leading question
could be “Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away draws on Japanese culture and imagery to appeal to
Japanese audiences. What aspects of the characters both spiritual and human in the bathhouse
relate to Japanese culture either past or present? In your response think about character
interactions such as Chihiro being courageous and brave and her parents disrespectful and
gluttonous”. This is a board guideline into what would be a good topic to assess analysis on, students
are given a direction into that analysis to look at characters and their interactions and to also relate
those interactions with how present and past Japan intersect and deviate.

It is also important that as a teacher I set limits to what can be handed in as students have
the potential to go above and beyond or become unfocused on the question that the task is
requiring. The time in which the assessment task has been set is for a five minute presentation, this
is important in focusing student arguments. They must learn to condense research and note taking
to significant points that they wish to make. It is good practise for all English work to have some
form of limitation which encourages condensing. Another point for limitations and work focus, it is
important to emphasize copyright practises. Students should not be using images that they haven’t
credited in their assessment task and therefore are restricted in doing so, this is a useful limitation as
it helps students develop the expectation of credited work for future tasks.

By taking on the assessment task myself I have gained a greater understanding of what is
achievable in a specific time frame and what factors I should consider important for marking.
Without creating this artefact I might have had unrealistic expectations of my students, making them
create a piece that was either unfocused or emphasised something that would not be overall
important to the syllabus outcomes that I was trying to achieve.