This is part of a series of resources developed for a year 8 English class in Australia. The first resource is a list of context-specific spelling words for the first six weeks of the term (24 words per week). The second is a PowerPoint introducing the unit and key terms. It specifies the difference between a theme and an issue, gives examples of specific social issues and it has a viewing activity to help students understand a particular social issue (poverty). Finally, it includes some images and creative writing prompts to get students thinking and writing themselves.

In order to create convincing crime fiction, students need to be able to analyse the portrayal of crime, criminals and the criminal justice system in various modern and canonical texts. This powerpoint goes through some theories of crime and includes some clips from crime films (e.g. Kindergarten Cop, A Time to Kill etc.) that help students understand these. The powerpoint covers info such as the Role of the law in society, the image of the criminal and how these can reflect their theories of human nature, beliefs about the causes of crime and information about how crime is dealt with by society.

A lesson used in a Senior Authority English class to teach students how to analyse visual images in preparation for the QCS test. It allows students to practise their use of the following core skills or common curriculum elements (CCEs): CCE 5 Interpreting the meaning of pictures; CCE 33 Inferring; and CCE 43 Analysing. This lesson provides recent political cartoons from Australian cartoonists David Pope (from The Canberra Times) and Mark Knight from The Herald Sun. Many are about the Double Dissolution election or the recent census but there are some about the great barrier reef and privatizing medicare. This lesson provides a brief overview of the history of political cartoons in Australia. It reveals how they work and what can be learned from studying them. It revisits the concept satire and defines many of the persuasive / satirical devices they use (e.g. symbolism, caricature, labels, analogy, irony, juxtaposition, and exaggeration). It has a few example analyses and then gives the students questions to ask themselves when analyzing a political cartoon. Students then answer these questions using the cartoons provided (mostly about refugee issues).