Unique resources created by an experienced Secondary English and History teacher. These are academically rigorous resources that target children between 13 and 18 years of age.
Unique resources created by an experienced Secondary English and History teacher. These are academically rigorous resources that target children between 13 and 18 years of age.
An introduction to the Liberal party and their ideology. A copy of one of their advertisements prior to the election. Some clips from the Chaser talking about the events in the lead up to the election. Looking at the Jobs and Growth slogan and what it meant. Looking at info on their website which explained how they were going to achieve this. Looking at the trickle down theory (and the flaws with this idea). A brief overview of the 14 election issues.
Additional resource: voting in Australia booklet 2016 which explains the three levels of government in Australia, what electorates are, how federal elections work, how to enrol to vote, what a ballot paper looks like, how the results are counted, explaining what a referendum is and how to be an active citizen.
This lesson was designed for a year 11 class who are required to present an election speech to be on a youth advisory committee for the federal government. This lesson goes through the main aspects required for the introduction, body, and conclusion. It defines thesis statement and gives an example. It includes examples of each part of the speech (given about legalising marijuana for medicinal purposes). It reviews the PEEEL paragraphing acronym and the importance of paraphrasing, summarising and quoting. It ends with some tips for political speeches and some suggested vocabulary.
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.
A ppt which explores how the literary devices are used in texts that represent teenagers. Teen specific examples of parody including clips from 'Not Another Teen Movie.' Examples of sarcasm with clips from 'The Inbetweeners' tv show (no swearing). The impact of tone of voice. Introducing other techniques: exaggeration, burlesque, irony (with a clip from the Little Rascals and Shrek). Then it looks at clips of J'amie from Summer Heights High and an example monologue about this scene written by a past student.
Defining bullying and the various types. Info about the emergence of cyber bullying, a novel example - Destroying Avalon (2006) with a summary and key quotes. A list of texts which feature bullying. A few clips from Mean Girls followed by reflection questions, a clip from Glee, The OC and The Breakfast Club followed by reflection questions.
PowerPoint 1: Paragraph writing. This ppt uses the I do, we do, you do approach. Firstly there is a slide explaining the PEEEL paragraph structure. There is also an example paragraph about Taylor Swift’s You Belong with Me music video. Afterwards, students watch another music video (Caught in the Crowd) and construct their own paragraph based on what they observed in the teacher example.
PowerPoint 2: Explaining the assessment task (analytical essay).
Document: Scaffolding booklet for assessment task.
Two PowerPoints for a 10 English class.
defines satire, introduces key terms that students need to know including hyperbole, irony and parody. Introduces Daria as an example satirical text.An example clip and viewing questions.
Defining mockumentaries. How mockumentaries use satirical elements to reflect human experience. View excerpts an example mockumentary (Summer Heights High). 3 clips and responding questions.
A student workbook for watching the film including; a synopsis, a list of characters, viewing questions, themes in the film, key quotes & what others have said about the film.
The second is annotated notes taken from Cateforis, T. (2009). Rebel girls and singing boys: Performing music and gender in the teen movie. Current Musicology, (87), 161-190,247. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/224870683?accountid=16285
This is a history style lesson designed to help children understand the Stolen Generations before the next lesson where they will view poems about this issue and have to analyse them. It introduces students to the assimilation policy, includes images of newspaper advertisements at the time (selling half-caste children) and looks at the beliefs held at the time about this issue. It includes clips from the film Rabbit Proof Fence along with questions to help check for understanding and to develop empathy. Following this, information is provided about what the institutions were like as well as historical sources (testimonies of stolen children remembering the day they were taken). Finally, it looks at the effects and consequences of the stolen generation with information taken from the Creative Spirits website.
Additional resources: A handout with the questions for the Rabbit Proof Fence viewing activity.
A homework handout (mind mapping the effects of the stolen generation.)
Defining each theme and posing questions for students to consider e.g. Why do human beings have a basic need and desire to be in a group? What are the consequences of being an outcast from main groups? (both physically and mentally). Can groups affect your behavior and encourage you to engage in behaviors you might not otherwise? A list of texts which feature this theme. Clips from various teen films (mostly trailers) with questions for students to respond to post-viewing. It also explains how popular teens and unpopular teens are commonly shown.
PowerPoint 1: Defines monologue, goes through the requirements if students choose to record their monologue rather than presenting in class, prompts for what students should look for when watching Glee, post episode summary and activity,
PowerPoint 2: Explaining the monologue assessment task and requirements. Going through the structure of a monologue. Viewing a clip from Ferris Bueller's day off for inspiration. Going through expected language features.
These resources are for the beginning of a crime fiction unit taught to senior English students. This unit provides many opportunities for students to develop an enjoyment and appreciation of language and literature. Students will be exposed to canonical and popular culture texts that explore crime fiction. Great value for money, see the explanation of the six resources included below.
Resource 1: A Brief Introduction PowerPoint (defining crime and genre, introducing students to the crime fiction genre, the three basic elements of crime fiction and listing some subgenres of crime fiction.
Resource 2: One lesson from a unit entitled ‘Revolutionary texts of the past meet popular culture texts of today.’ A PowerPoint introducing students to gothic romantic literature (genre conventions). It explains the social context of the time this genre originated, it outlines its key features and looks at two prominent examples: an extract from Frankenstein and Edgar Allen Poe’s Short Story ‘Tell-Tale Heart.’
Resource 3: Homework handout with questions about ‘Tell-Tale Heart’
Resource 4: A copy of the ‘Tell-Tale Heart’ to email to students.
Resource 5 & 6: Spelling words for the term and a template for students to write their definitions and sentences in.
The unit focuses on the study and analysis of texts including a film, novel extracts and a range of short stories to allow students to judge and value literary works in terms of the insights and truths they offer. Students should come to realise that both popular culture and canonical texts have meaning and value in contemporary society. If you are interested in the other resources from this unit, please visit my shop.
1) A fun an engaging PPT designed to build up students' reading comprehension abilities. It includes a definition of war, a series of questions for classroom discussion (drawing on prior knowledge), a small clip from Forrest Gump for students to watch and discuss (questions included), info about who writes war poetry and the various reasons they have for doing so, an answer to the question 'why read poetry?' Following this the PPT encourages students to engage with three poetic texts and learn to read for meaning and to appreciate the emotions created by the author and how they achieve this. Each poem comes with questions to check for student comprehension and to begin scaffoldin their ability to analyse.
2) A handout with the words to each poem: Grandpa what did you do in the war?, Gaps in the ranks & And the band played Waltzing Matilda
3) A Poetry retrieval chart (homework) for students to complete to revise after the lesson -- I would send these out via email to be completed electronically.
A PowerPoint presentation which teaches students how to structure a paragraph using the PEEL acronym. This will be used by students when they write their reviews of the poems they will later read. The PPT includes the words to Kidnappers by Iris Clayton which explores some of the consequences of the stolen generation. Children are asked to write a PEEL paragraph in response to a set question. Depending on the ability level of the class this can be done independently or as a group with the teacher writing their suggestions on the board. This process is repeated for another two poems.
I have also provided a handout with the words for each poem and the questions (for students who need hard copies).
Additional resource: homework handout - a three level guide (designed to prompt higher order thinking about the topic).
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.
Prior to students learning about moral issues in The Hunger Games, they must first learn what morals are and have a chance to identify them in other texts. This PowerPoint teaches students what terms including moral, morality and immoral mean. Students are also introduced to the news genre and its purpose. They learn about how regular news stories are structured and their common language before reading a news story with a moral issue in it. After reading the article there are a series of comprehension questions which could be answered individually or as a class depending on the abilities of your learners. These questions increase in difficulty and were written using verbs from Bloom's taxonomy.
Resource 2: A copy of the newspaper article students explored in this lesson (taken from an Australian newspaper in 2017).
This booklet has been designed as part of a unit of work on Catching Fire (the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy). It includes activities about characters, the setting and language features which students are to complete as they read the novel. There are also questions about the events/themes/character's perspectives et cetera for each chapter.
This is all in preparation for a creative writing assessment where students take what they have learned to create two or three diary entries which provide insight into a minor character from the novel. In doing so they must reveal the personality of their character through what they see, think, feel, hope for and fear.
Students were assessed on how purposefully they shaped their representations of people, places, events and concepts in the novel.
3 resources used in a 9 English unit.
1) A homework sheet which includes the poem 'Then and Now' by Oodgeroo Noonuccal and comprehension questions which are designed to help students begin to analyse the text. This poem touches on the dispossession of land and the consequences for the poet and her people.
2) A PowerPoint which teaches visual source analysis using the picture book 'The Rabbits' by John Marsden (illustrated by Shaun Tan). Students have to respond to the images by answering the following questions: What do you feel about the imagery? What does it mean to you? What is the idea of Australian identity portrayed in the picture? Afterwards, the PPT explains that this story is an allegory. The PowerPoint also includes some examples of Australian slang (as this is part of a stereotypes unit).
3) A PowerPoint which points out that for a long time there were “entrenched negative stereotypes” about Aboriginal people in Australia and how the media’s focus on negative Aboriginal issues creates much hurt when it presents the problems of individual Aboriginal people as problems of all Indigenous Australians. It explores the negative stereotypes about Indigenous people as shown in Bran Neu Dae and the positive attributes shown in The Sapphires. The clips I have selected from Bran Neu Dae are humorous but touch on serious issues and often generate good classroom discussions.
Hunger Games 1 Student Work Booklet. This booklet has been designed as part of a unit of work on moral issues. It includes activities about characters, the setting and language features which students are to complete as they read the novel. There are also questions about the events/themes/character's perspectives et cetera for each chapter.
This is all in preparation for a feature article assessment where students respond to the following statement:‘In times of conflict people disregard the social and moral norms of the time. This has been reflected in various fictional texts.’
Students must form and argument and persuade their audience to accept your viewpoint. They also had to analyse quotes and examples from the novel and use them to justify their argument.
Within their feature article they had to:
Use specific examples of moral issues from The Hunger Games.
Focus on one or two characters in the novel (and their perspective of the moral issue).
Quote from the novel and identify language features which help position readers to view the moral issue in a particular way. You must explain the effect of these language features
Include genre features such as a headline, by-line, two columns, images and captions
Write in 3rd person and use a range of language features to engage your readers (e.g. similes, metaphors, rhetorical questions etc.).
Two powerpoints used in a 8 English protest poetry unit I designed.
The first explores: What is critical literacy and why do we need these skills? How will it help us to understand protest poems? It introduces key critical literacy terms (ideology, privileged, intended reading, marginalised, silenced etc.) It includes a list of things it is important to be aware of when viewing or reading a poem/text. It also begins to introduce students to Indigenous Australian issues as these are the first series of poems to be explored. It includes poems about colonisation and questions to prompt students to analyse these poems.
The second is an introduction to poetic devices which includes definitions and examples of personification, rhyme, onomatopoeia, alliteration, simile, metaphor etc.
Additional resource: A handout I use at the end of the poetic devices lesson to check whether the students have understood what was taught (it is a matching terms activity).