12 Essential English – Australian narratives unit – Unit Introduction

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 - Topic 2: Creating representations of Australian identities, places, events and concepts.” During this unit students learned about Australian social groups. They engaged with a range of short stories representing Australia. Their assessment was to write a short story which explored a gap/silence from one of the texts they studied in class.

About the PPT: the first PPT in the final unit of 12 Essential English. It begins with some details about the IA4 assessment and a breakdown of what lessons are to be taught in the term. The Unit Learning Intentions and Success criteria are displayed. This is followed by a recap of what the term ‘representations’ means. Students need to brainstorm some ‘ways of being Australian’ this is used to introduce students to Australian social groups and some that they may not think of {marginalised/silenced perspectives}. I then introduced the first short story – Tim Winton’s Neighbours. There is a retrieval chart students will be completing for each story they will read. After reading the story, there are some discussion questions which I use with the students. Students then share their responses for the retrieval chart. We then discuss what the key themes of the story are. Following this, I introduce students to the ideas of gaps and silences. We view two trailers for films which are an example of this type of tale (Cruella and Rosaline). Afterwards we learn about 3 types of narrators and discuss which type was used in the original story, and what other viewpoints they could use. The cool down for the lesson were 3 terms to add to their glossary.

Other resources:
A copy of the Short Story and the retrieval chart