By Jennie Gotley’s and Jan Devoren’s 4/5 class
The Black Cockatoo (2018) is a novella written by Carl Merrison and Hakea Hustler.
During our Literacy lessons this term we’ve been studying The Black Cockatoo. The authors had seen online that we were studying their book and, to our surprise, sent us a copy in the mail!
The book explores themes of family, culture and life in the Kimberley area as it tells the story of a young girl who rescues a black cockatoo.
Many literacy tasks and ideas have been developed to accompany the book to extend student’s learning. We added some cross curriculum work to engage and extend certain topics.
We painted pictures of black cockatoos that we researched on the internet. We coloured them with pastels and finished them with paint wash over the top, using either blue or orange paint.
“I liked how they looked cool together when we pinned them up and I thought that they were all unique in their own way. We also made damper with Jake Burgoyne. We were in different groups and we made one damper in each group, there were two sweet ones and two plain ones for people who didn’t want to try the sweet ones. They were good.” —Lucy
“I liked doing the paintings.” —Oliver
