A Book a Week - Belonging Jeannie Baker - Complete English Unit Stage 2 -History

This is a HUGE 88-page complete English unit based on the amazing book “Belonging” by Jeannie Baker.

This is a unit of work I created to support the teaching of the Stage Two History unit “Community and Remembrance”, which requires students to reflect upon the changes which have occurred in their local area over time. Belonging is a perfect text to support the teaching of this unit.

I try to never have “my voice” in product listings but…this is quite simply one of my favourite units to teach! The book is a wordless text, which requires students to constantly access Visual Literacy skills, and I just love the writing unit associated with this text. It’s a high engagement, higher-order unit of work for Stage Two which they thoroughly enjoy!

My “Book a Week” units have everything required to teach your English requirements over the course of a week - Speaking and Listening, Reading and Writing.

This unit of work uses Belonging as a mentor text for students to create a hybrid (imaginative and informative) wordless text of their own. Students create a text in the style of Belonging, whereby they recount their life to date in a series of images (looking through a window, just like Tracy in the book), and then envisage their own futures and what they would like them to look like.

Included in this unit of work is:

• all curriculum links, both ACARA and NESA. English curriculum links are included, as well as HASS/HSIE.

• a detailed lesson guide, outlining everything you need to teach the unit. This is a step-by-step daily lesson plan, with work samples, tips and suggestions and more.

• all learning intentions and success criteria.

• embedded oral language prompts, based on Belonging.

• a comprehensive shared reading supporting slideshow, containing lots of visual supports. This includes page-by-page comprehension questions (both literal and inferential).

• a full-colour background to the text, including a suburb case study on the real-life basis for the text (Leichhardt, NSW) and an overview of the "Reclaim the Streets movement which inspired the text

• a complete writing unit (which for my class took longer than one week, but is provided here in varying lengths), with all associated planning and publishing templates

• ten high-interest literature centre task cards, based on Belonging. These are designed to be engaging and fun with a high degree of student choice, so as to allow for independent work. Tasks incorporate areas such as research, designing, the Creative Arts and more. There are also imaginative, informative and persuasive written tasks based on Belonging.

• All associated printables to support the literature circle tasks. These can also be used in isolation as well.

I have many other literature based resources in my store. Please feel free to check them out.

Happy reading!