In addition to analysing cinematic techniques (aka visual features), students need to analyse the effect of language features in their chosen documentary. This lesson introduces students to a range of language features to watch out for with examples from Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 and Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me. These language features include high modality, rhetorical questions, emotive language, repetition and groups of three. It also includes a list of generic questions for students to ask themselves when watching documentaries.

For many decades women were marginalised from texts about life in the bush. If they were mentioned at all they were the wives waiting back at the homestead and played no real role in the text. One exception is the short story ‘The Drovers Wife’ (1894) written by Henry Lawson. This PPT and Work Sheet guide students to read and analyse the story and the effect of its language features and descriptions on readers.

Part of a set of resources created for a year 10 English class in Australia (ACARA syllabus). The other resources are also available in my store – Aussie_Resources. A PowerPoint designed for use in a 70 minute lesson. The lesson begins with a brainstorming activity where students reflect on the news they have seen recently and make a list of people, issues and events. This is a good prompt for a discussion about topical stories. This is followed by a survey of what category of news e.g. sports, entertainment news, political news etc. It also talks about the frequency of accessing the news and the ways that they engage with the news. Once students are settled introduce the major focus of the lesson: How do journalists / media companies shape our beliefs about / attitudes towards different people? The lesson introduces a key term ‘target audience’ and how this determines what specific news organisations report. Pose the question: Is the news a trustworthy source of information? Introduce terms for students to add to glossary: bias, empowerment, disempowerment Learn some ways that bias is omission, exaggeration, selective statistics, evaluative language and biased language choices Look at some famous people who have been shown positively and negatively in the media (images juxtaposed side by side). Great for discussion Look at an article (about Britney Spears) and how it creates a certain representation of a her through language choices, who is quoted, the balance between facts and opinions, whose views are silenced (omitted) After discussing what they have learned, the lesson ends with a definition of ‘hard news’ and ‘soft news’ and a list of news stories for them to classify into these two categories.

PowerPoint 1: Unit introduction including classroom expectations (rules), an explanation of the unit, key questions for the unit, explaining the 2 assessment tasks, looking at famous quotes about teens and seeing if they agree, a list of teen issues and themes, common settings and characters for teen films. PowerPoint 2: exploring teenage stereotypes. This lesson defines stereotypes and gives examples of what stereotypes are, explores why we stereotype people, looks at common stereotypes about teenagers. The PPT includes excerpts from 2 Hollywood films (10 Things I Hate About You & Mean Girls) and questions to encourage students to identify the stereotypes in them.

Introduction to the hard-boiled genre of crime fiction (Set in1930s - 1950s America) This PowerPoint examines the genre conventions of hard-boiled fiction, the typical protagonist of these tales & events that were occurring in American society at the time these tales were written, and how these influenced these texts. Students will watch a trailer for The Maltese Falcon Trailer (a famous example). The movie of The Maltese Falcon is dated 1941, during the War, but the story was published in 1930: it’s a tale of the roaring ‘20s. The PPT also includes a trailer for a recent example (the HBO television series Boardwalk Empire) which recreates this era.

This powerpoint introduces students to key terms which are necessary for a study of documentaries e.g. intertitle, masked interview etc. After these terms the lesson introduces students to audio and visual devices which are used to position audiences in documentaries e.g. narration / voice over, music, sound effects, slow motion and other visual editing effects. After copying these notes students view a small clip about climate change from a biased documentary and have to practice identifying these features.

A PowerPoint which lists each of the characters in the play alongside key points about them (with images from the Baz Luhrmann movie). Activities to check for student understanding (including filling in a character tree.) This is followed by an explanation of key themes in the play (fate, love, hate, authority, time/timing). It concludes with an exploration of The Prologue which opens the play (Act 1). An updated version of this PowerPoint which removed the key themes which has been replaced with information about the life and times of Shakespeare. (It also includes classroom rules as it was used at the beginning of a new term). Part of a set of resources created for a year 10 English class in Australia (ACARA syllabus). The other resources are also available in my store - lrigb4. Designed for use in 70 minute lessons (with extra activities as a back up if the class is advanced).

The first two lessons in a year 9 English unit. Within this unit, students engage with a range of Australian literary texts including short stories, films and poetry, and literature for stereotypes including bogans, Indigenous Australians and bushmen etc. We also explore concepts like multiculturalism, fair go and mateship. Students explore how events, situations and people can be represented from different perspectives and draw conclusions about characters, key ideas and Australia’s identity, justifying these with selective use of textual evidence. PowerPoint 1: Unit introduction Classroom expectations, Homework expectations, Expectations around use of laptops in the classroom and an introduction to the unit. It includes questions to prompt students to brainstorm their prior knowledge. It also includes clips from advertisements including the Australia Day Lamb Ads for fun brainstorming activities. PowerPoint 2: Introduction to key terms: multicultural, patriot, assimilate, nationalism and juxtapositon. Identifying Australian stereotypes within a music video parody Defining the term Identity and teaching students how to answer quesitons using the RAF method. It includes example responses and then questions for the students to respod to.

List of emotive words which are useful for creative writing tasks.

This unit was designed for a year 10 English class in Australia. Within this unit students learn to analyse and evaluate how human experience is represented in new media texts and documentaries, including the use of images. Students will also develop a critical understanding of the contemporary media and analyse the differences between news media texts. This PowerPoint introduces students to what a documentary is and how they can have powerful social and political influence. The lesson goes on to outline the key features of a documentary and the two main types of documentaries (objective and subjective). It explains the difference and then includes a series of short clips for students to view and decide whether it is an objective/subjective documentary. It also includes a research activity (homework sheet) for students to investigate the works of Michael Moore.

This 32 page booklet has been designed as part of an Australian film studies unit focusing on the 2002 film The Rabbit Proof Fence. It includes activities exploring characterisation, the beliefs of the time and analysing the aesthetic features (film and language techniques) which students are to complete during and after viewing the film. While used for year 9 in this case, it could be applicable for any junior secondary grade. It could also be used during NAIDOC week. This booklet contains resources which would be useful for preparing students to write a range of genres including film reviews, feature articles, persuasive texts and analytical essays. There are questions about the events/themes/character’s perspectives and the effects of the aesthetic features. It introduces students to concepts such as textual structures, language features, visual features, film techniques and themes. It includes information about the socio cultural context of the film, articles about the women on which the film is based, key quotes from the film, scaffolded analysis activities for key scenes, an introduction to evaluative language and how it is used to describe films. The final pages include an explanation of how to structure an essay (along with planning and editing steps).

Excellent for preparing students for NAPLAN, narrative structure. Naplan expectations. Example stimulus. Writing task.

Context: A lesson designed for use in a 12 Essential English classroom in Queensland, Australia as part of Unit 4: “Representations and popular culture texts.” During this unit students learned about Hero and Villain films and how filmmakers use cinematic techniques to portray them and create an intended message. Their assessment at the end of this unit was to write a 4-6 minute multimodal (speech) to be delivered live or pre-recorded reviewing one of the three films shown within the unit. About the PPT: the PPT begins with an explanation of the unit and the upcoming assessment. There are some terms for students to add to their glossary and a brainstorming activity to see what films students have seen in recent years which feature heroes / villains. Some sample answers grouped under Marvel, DC and Warner Brothers are provided. Students are introduced to definitions of terms including hero, superhero, anti-hero, antagonist and villain. Students are introduced to the Gallery of Modern Arts which is part of the context for their assessment. They see images of the building and photographs I took in 2017 when I went to a Marvel specific exhibition. This is followed by information about the origins of super heroes (comic books). Specific references are made to Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. There are some clips of early TV and film versions of these characters.

About the PPT: The lesson begins with an activity which asks the students to brainstorm some attitudes they associate with heroes. The slide includes a reminder of what an attitude is and some answers which pop up when you click. There is a viewing activity from YouTube about heroic archetypes which goes for 11 minutes which you can watch to gather further heroic traits from. This is followed by an explanation of what a nemesis is and some of their qualities. Next some common conventions of hero texts are explained. Joseph Conrad’s hero’s journey monomyth is explained. Some information about criticism of this monomyth is provided as well as information about the emergence of films which have female leads. Subsequently student are introduced to a music video report card which they will fill in as we watch the 3 films this term. Screen shots are included on the slides so I could explain the various parts. We quickly recap language features (especially cinematic devices) discussed in earlier lessons. More information is provided about music and sound effects (diegetic and non diegetic sound). Information about factors which influence the listener are explained and list of words for describing music care provided. Next the impacts of light and shadows are explained. The following are explained: high-key lighting, low-key lighting, backlighting and shadow. Next the following transitions are explained in more detail – fade, dissolve, wipe and cut. Themes are explained with a visual showing common themes. Lastly, students are introduced to the film they will watch in future lessons – Batman Forever. They watch the trailer, get some contextual information to add to their report card, are shown images of each of the characters and read a brief synopsis of the plot. About the Word Doc: A movie review retrieval chart for students to fill in during subsequent lessons. Context: A lesson designed for use in a 12 Essential English classroom in Queensland, Australia as part of Unit 4: “Representations and popular culture texts.” During this unit students learned about Hero and Villain films and how filmmakers use cinematic techniques to portray them and create an intended message. Their assessment at the end of this unit was to write a 4-6 minute multimodal (speech) to be delivered live or pre-recorded reviewing one of the three films shown within the unit.

Part of a set of resources created for a year 10 English class in Australia (ACARA syllabus). The other resources are also available in my store – Aussie_Resources. A PowerPoint designed for use in a 70 minute lesson. This unit teaches students to be media literate and prepares them to do a speech where they analyse 1 x print news item and 1 x audio visual news item. This lesson focuses on the visual features and text structures of print-based news media texts. It begins with the requirements of news stories and some activities e.g. make a headline from a prompt, read a headline and make it more emotive. This is followed by information about how print based news media is structured (an intro to the inverted pyramid structure). A discussion of layout and reading paths follows. There are images of news stories with the features annotated (e.g. headline, byline, lead, images, captions, pull quotes, columns). Important terms like pull quote, foregrounding, bolded text, text enhancement etc. are explained and examples are provided. There is also an explanation of things to discuss when analysing pictures including colour and the mood evoked by it. There are also some checking for understanding activities which can be done as a class discussion / a written activity depending on the preference of the teacher.

Part of a set of resources created for a year 10 English class in Australia (ACARA syllabus). The other resources are also available in my store – Aussie_Resources. A PowerPoint designed for use in a 70 minute lesson. This lesson begins by defining what a representation is and why they are so powerful. The variance in portrayals of Meghan Markle and Princess Kate are used to prompt discussion. This is followed by a series of slides about the language features that students can look for when analysing news stories. The slides include definitions and examples. Language features include: similes, metaphors, appeal to authority, appeal to emotion, connotations, emotive language, hyperbole, repetition, inclusive language, omission, groups of three, rhetorical questions, alliteration, idioms and hashtags. The lesson concludes with reading an example article about Novak Djokovic and considering whether it paints him in a positive / negative light. There are a series of questions to help students to analyse this text.

Resources designed for the new senior Modern History syllabus (implemented in QLD in 2019). This lesson includes: 1 x list of source types for warm up evaluation activity (can be laminated with a magnet on the back for sorting activity) 1 x PowerPoint 1 x Source Booklet with sources about Hitler Youth 1 x Independent Work Booklet with various activities designed to help students practice the evaluation skill Context: My school runs this program in Alternative Sequence (yr 11 and 12s in together) due to the small size of the school. The lesson begins with some teaching that both grades can do together before the year 12s are assigned some independent work and the year 11s are given some more focused teaching. Then the year 11’s do independent work while the year 12s share their answers and receive feedback. The sequence of the lesson: The lesson begins with a warm up activity where students have to place types of sources on a grid in terms of how reliable and useful they typically are. Next students have to brainstorm some synonyms and antonyms for ‘reliable’ and ‘useful.’ Following this, year 12s are given a booklet which has evaluation activities (starting at simple activities and building up to those styled like the short response questions in the Term 4 exam). They begin completing these while the year 11’s get a more teacher centred lesson. In this portion of the lesson we begin with defining ‘evaluate’ before zooming in on the evaluation criteria we use in modern history – reliability and usefulness. There is information about what reliability is and that there are levels of reliability. There are tips for how to write a judgement of reliability and some things to look for when determining reliability. There is a list of reasons why a source may be deemed unreliable. There is an example reliability statement which has been colour coded to show how the writer has included various features of evidence in their evaluation. Following this, the gradual release method is used to engage with the first few sources in the booklet. (I explain the first activity, we engage with Source 1 and then complete the question together – with me modelling my thinking process via think alouds. Students then do Source 2 as a pair and Source 3 on their own). This is followed by explicit teaching on how to determine the usefulness of a source. There is also information about the importance of corroboration (including a video from the History Skills website). This is followed by some sentence starters which can be used when corroborating. This is followed by completing activities from the booklet (first as a we do, then students do one in a pair, then they do one on their own). Following this, the year 11’s continue doing the booklet independently while I go through the answers with the year 12s.

A unit introduction PowerPoint for a unit entitled Literary Representations of Australia. Within this unit, students learn about Australian identity and then consider how this is represented in the novel Deadly Unna? By Phillip Gwynne. The PPT includes an assessment overview, a discussion of what it means to be Australian and how our Australian identity is constructed and defined. Students completed a brainstorming activity based on texts they viewed in the last few weeks of the previous term. A thought-provoking poem entitle ‘How Australian are You’ is included to prompt discussion of the many ways of being Australian and some of the stereotypes which exist about us. This is followed by a think-pair-share activity. Following this, students are introduced to the term representations. They are then shown the first two verses of the Australian national anthem to explore (with 4 questions). This is followed by a paragraph writing task to consolidate what they have learned. If time permits, students are introduced to some critical literacy terms: marginalised and silenced. Students are also talked through the elements of their novel study booklet. Resources designed for 10 English in Queensland, Australia. It is part of a novel study unit which culminates in a 90-minute examination (500 to 800-word essay). Students had 1 week notice of the question and could bring 100 words of notes in with them. Within this unit students explored how an author’s use of language features, images and vocabulary contributed to the representation of themes in the novel. They also gained a deeper understanding of key literary techniques, including (but not limited to) characterisation, plot, and setting.

The lesson begins with an explanation of what themes are, and an image of common themes in literature. Following this there are slides explaining the following themes: Masculinity (and toxic masculinity) Racism The importance of family Mateship Duty and Sacrifice Examples from the novel are provided. This is followed by a practice question + some planning activities around this question. Resources designed for 10 English in Queensland, Australia. It is part of a novel study unit which culminates in a 90-minute examination (500 to 800-word essay). Students had 1 week notice of the question and could bring 100 words of notes in with them. Within this unit students explored how an author’s use of language features, images and vocabulary contributed to the representation of themes in the novel. They also gained a deeper understanding of key literary techniques, including (but not limited to) characterisation, plot, and setting.

A PowerPoint which provides an image and summary for the following characters from Deadly Unna? (pictures taken from the film Aussie Rules). Bob Black aka The Old Man Gwen Black (Blacky’s mum) Gary Black Dumby Red Pickles Coach Robertson aka Arks Tim Black aka Best Team-Man Darcy I printed these up and used them as posters in the classroom.