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.
4 resources designed for a year 8 poetry unit. The first is a PowerPoint which takes students through the STEP UP acronym which they will use to analyse poems in their upcoming assessment: subject matter, theme, emotions, poetic devices, your interpretation, purpose… It includes prompting questions that students should ask themselves to help guide their response for each category. It then includes a poem about a refugee and slides which work through the STEP UP process.
The second is a worksheet for modified students which has most of the notes written so that they only have to write a few.
The third is a handout which explains STEP UP which could be used as a poster.
The fourth is a typed version of the analysis of the refugee poem (in a Word Doc)
Two PowerPoints for a 9 English Unit.
The first PowerPoint includes a synopsis of the film and the film trailer is embedded. This is followed by a range of clips and viewing questions. It also includes information about how Indigenous Australians are portrayed in the film. Additionally, there is a section on exploring key quotes. Students have to pick out the slang and the beliefs of the protagonist which are indicated in the quote.
The second PowerPoint is a paragraph writing lesson. It takes students through the various stereotypes in the film and includes some pre-writing (planning) steps. It reviews the PEEEL paragraph structure. It includes some scaffolding (suggested sentence starters) along with an example paragraph (which is colour coded to indicate which section it addresses). After this activity, there is information about modality and some examples of high and low modality words. There is also some information about linking words.
This lesson is an introduction to a moral/ethical dilemma - designer babies and saviour siblings. It defines each of these terms, includes quotes from doctors, a discussion of what genetic testing can currently do and a speculation what it could be used for in the future, some questions about the ethics of genetic testing, three case studies for students to consider, and a film trailer from My Sister's Keeper in preparation for watching this film.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This resource was designed as an introduction to a film studies unit focusing on the moral issues and moral dilemmas that the characters faced in the film Remember the Titans. It has enough content to take a few lessons.
This resource would still be useful for other films as it teaches students about various textual structures, language and visual features which directors use to influence how the audience responds to the film.
It includes a summary of the film, a definition of dialogue and some examples for students to discuss (what it reveals about the characters), nonverbal communication, visual features to focus on e.g. costuming. It also goes through various cinematic techniques with a definition and an example from a famous film e.g. The Shining, Forrest Gump, Harry Potter and The Help (with post-viewing questions).
The film techniques covered are panning, tracking, tilting, zooming, montage, transition, simultaneous time, slow motion, music, sound effects, shot sizes. It ends with a cloze strategy to check whether students have understood these terms.
It then goes on to provide some historical context about the Civil Rights movement in the US.
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
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.
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.
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).
A lesson aimed to help shape student's understanding the lived experiences of soldiers in Vietnam. It focuses on two key texts: I was only 19 and Homecoming. The PPT includes a video of the song I was only 19 which students will listen to. They will then view key lyrics and talk about the representation of the Vietnam war in this text (including the literary devices used). After this is some information to help students empathise with what this would have been like especially for the conscripts. Some brief info is provided about 'fragging' and how the treatment the Veterans received upon their homecoming severely damaged countless veterans. It briefly looks at lyrics from Khe Sanh which discuss the experiences of a returned soldier. The remainder of the PowerPoint explores the poem Homecoming (which I ran as a separate lesson).
2) a handout with questions about Homecoming.
We will then turn our focus to the major poem for this war in our booklet (Homecoming). We will talk about the difference between these representations.
This worksheet can be used as a one on one tutoring resource. Alternatively, you can take activities from here to use as fast finishers or homework activities.
This document introduces students to key terms like fact, opinion and embellishment. It includes sentences and paragraphs and challenges students to identify whether they are subjective/objective. It also provides some information about zoos and asks students to write a subjective and objective paragraph about the topic.
The second section explores how verbs, adverbs and well-constructed, extended noun groups can position the reader to form an opinion or judge a person. It gives an example of a famous Australian and shows how by changing a few words you can change the connotation of the text. It includes comprehension questions to check the students understanding.
In the third section, a subjective newspaper article about the Vietnam war is included for students to analyse. There are comprehension questions which follow this.
The final section introduces students to the concept of tone and gives them a list of different words to describe the tone of a text. Students then look at an advertisement and have to suggest the tone. Subsequently, they read a bias newspaper article and answer questions about this. Finally, there is a writing activity for students which encourages them to write persuasively.
A PowerPoint to guide students as they read the World War One poem ‘Aftermath.’ It includes information about the author’s background and encourages students to speculate about how that influenced him to write Aftermath. As they read the poem there are little discussion-prompting questions and annotations down the side. Afterwards, students will suggest an intended reading and explore how the language features contributed to this message. Finally, students will review what they have learned about WW1 as next lesson they will move onto a new time period.
The handout with the typed questions from the PPT.
As part of a year 9 English unit investigating means to be Australian, this PowerPoint looks at one of the earliest stereotypes about Australians: that of the rugged bushman. It focuses on the bushman stereotype and poems written by Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson.
This PowerPoint was designed to teach students how to:
Evaluate the use of stereotypes in the texts
explain how the poet’s use of language helps to create meaning in the poem and positions readers in a certain way.
Explain what is accurate and what may be inaccurate about the Aussie bushman stereotype
This lesson explains the origins of this bush myth and why it was adopted by Australians. It introduces students to poetic ballads including the Man from Snowy River (which they watch a youtube clip of and must then respond to a series of questions). It also includes a summary of challenges often depicted in these poems. Subsequently, students read a Henry Lawson Poem (Ballad of the Drover) to compare the writing styles of Lawson and Patterson. Poems are included in this resource (as a handout).
This PPT also explains the link between bushmen and diggers, lists recent films which continue this stereotype etc.
Part of a set of resources created for a year 7 English class in Australia (ACARA syllabus). The other resources are also available in my store - Aussie_Resources. Designed for use in 70 minute lessons (with extra activities as a back up if the class is advanced). The focus text is ‘Black Snake: The Daring of Ned Kelly’ by Carole Wilkinson.
1) Lesson PowerPoint
The beginning of the PowerPoint introduces students to some of the key language features used in the novel Black Snake with definitions, examples and examples from Black Snake. The language features are colloquialisms, idioms, figurative language {similes / metaphors} & descriptive language {adjectives.} Afterwards there are some comprehension questions. Afterwards we look at a picture book – ‘Ned Kelly and the Green Sash’ written by Mark Greenwood and illustrated by Frane Lessac. As we read the story, students are encouraged to think about the language and visual features used and the effects they create in telling the story. Afterwards, the students can read the remainder of chapter 1 filling in the retrieval chart. If there is time at the end, there is a slide about how to identify factual information from evaluative language and a slide summing up the events in chapter 1.
2) A retrieval chart for students to summarise what they have learned while reading Chapter 1.
Teaching about 'parts of speech' and how action words vary depending on what tense you are using. This includes creative writing activities based on visual stimuli. It also includes scanned sections from worksheets with activities for students to work through independently or as a class depending on their level.
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.
A free worksheet used for watching Season 2, Episode 1 of Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam (available on Click View – if your school is a member). In Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam, the popular chef explores the country of his heritage, cooking up an abundance of dishes from this much-loved cuisine. In this episode, Luke explores the food and culture of Hue, home to the ruling Emperors of the 17th century in central Vietnam. The recipes prepared In this episode are available on the SBS website.
Resources designed for use in an 11 Hospitality Practices class in Australia (2019 curriculum). My school has 70-minute lessons. (2 x theory and 1 x prac).