Pigeon Impossible film by Lucas Martel This is a newspaper writing task designed to be paired with the reading/writing prompt ‘Pigeon Impossible’ available on YouTube and the Literacy Shed. Students will write a newspaper article with the title “Rocket Rumble” and a “Wanted” article describing Secret Agent Walter Beckett. This document is fully editable, so is suitable for remote learning and/or digital submissions.

The layers of the atmosphere flip book is great manipulative for hands-on learning. Students cut around the rectangle, then cut along the red lines to create flaps. The long edge is glued into their workbook and they fold the flaps up to write their information under the relevant headings. Hands-on learning improves engagement and information retention, so I hope that your learners enjoy this activity.

This is a writing lesson that includes a video link to a YouTube writing prompt. There is a task sheet included to hand out to students, or to digitally disseminate if you are teaching online. There is also a comic strip template included for students who would like to write a comic strip. The document is in Word document format for you to edit expectations to meet your class’ needs as well as a PDF version. Please note that it was created using a Macbook, so if you are viewing the Word document using a PC the formating may change. The formatting will be fixed if you use the PDF version.

This is a reading task for VCAL Literacy - reading for practical purposes. The task includes links to two public newspaper articles. Students read both articles and answer comprehension questions aligned to the VCAL Literacy curriculum. Included is: Word document for dissemination to students Word document for teachers with the task, curriculum links and the newspaper article links PowerPoint for introducing and teaching the task I have taught this unit to my class and my team teacher has also taught this unit. We had positive responses. I hope you and your students find this unit engaging, practice skills for analysing newspaper articles to ascertain important information within their community. Please feel free to change the newspaper articles to a topic / location relevant to you and your students’ interests.

This is a resilience lesson for social emotional learning (SEL). I have developed this lesson to be taught via distance learning. The lesson looks at what resilience is, what it looks like in real life through an inspirational speaker video and answering some questions about what resilience looks like in their individual lives. There is also a short journal entry task and a creative task. This resource is in Word Document format so that you and your students can edit the document to suit your class needs, as well as for students to complete the task and submit it to you through your chosen digital platform.

These printable bookmarks make the perfect gift for your students at the end of the year. They are double-sided, so you can leave a parting message for your students. The document is fully editable. You will need to create a bitmoji of yourself to insert on the front of the bookmark (the bitmojis in the file are of me)… or you may leave me there if you don’t want to create your own bitmoji! The back of the bookmark has a meaningful message to students. Again, it is fully editable, so you may wish to edit the message to suit yourself and the message you’d like to give your students.

This unit is based on the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma. The unit explores the moral and ethical issues and implications of social media and their role in society. This unit has 5 tasks included. All tasks are interactive notebook tasks to engage creativity and critical thinking to encourage students to think more deeply about the ethical implications of the role social media plays in their lives and society in general.

This is a writing task for VCAL Literacy - writing for practical purposes. The task subject is ‘Dear Australia’ and is a formal letter. Although the ‘Dear Australia’ promotion has finished through Australia Post, this task is still relevant to reflect on and record personal experiences of living through the COVID-19 pandemic for posterity. Included is: Word document for dissemination to students Word document for teachers with the task, curriculum links and the graphic organisers for printing PowerPoint for introducing and teaching the task I have taught this unit to my class and my team teacher has also taught this unit. We had positive responses, with students keen to post their letters. I hope you and your students find this unit engaging, practice skills for practical purposes and increase vocabulary, punctuation and grammar skills.

This is a reading task for VCAL Literacy - reading for self-expression. The task uses comic books as the basis for the unit. It includes links to publicly available comic books that I used (I taught this during remote learning). In the classroom, you may like to provide students with a variety of comic books from your library or they may bring in their own to read. Students read two comic books of their choice and answer comprehension questions aligned to the VCAL Literacy curriculum. Included: Word document for dissemination to students Word document for teachers with the task, curriculum links and the comic book links PowerPoint for introducing and teaching the task I have taught this comic book unit to my class and my team teacher has also taught this unit. We had positive responses and the students really enjoyed reading a different text type. I hope you and your students find this unit engaging. Please feel free to change the comic books to a topic relevant to you and your students’ interests.

This is a writing task for VCAL Literacy - writing for self-expression. The task uses comic books as the basis for the unit. Students will create their own comic book character using a character profile graphic organiser. Students will then map out their storyline using a story map graphic organiser. Students will then use the comic strip template to create their own comic strip using the character the created and the story map. Included is: Word document for dissemination to students Word document for teachers with the task, curriculum links and all graphic organisers / templates for printing PowerPoint for introducing and teaching the task I have taught this unit to my class during remote learning and my team teacher has also taught this unit. We had positive responses, with students creating entertaining and, often humorous, comic strips. I hope you and your students find this unit engaging, practice skills for getting their message across using multimodal literacies and increase vocabulary, punctuation and grammar skills.

This is a writing task for VCAL Literacy - writing for knowledge. Task uses timelines as the theme for writing for knowledge. Students explore the purpose of timelines and the use planning and drafting to create a timeline of a significant person in their lives. Included is: Word document for dissemination to students (suitable for distance learning) Word document for teachers with the task, curriculum links and all graphic organisers / templates for printing PowerPoint for introducing and teaching the task I hope you and your students find this unit engaging, practice skills for getting their message across using multimodal literacies and increase vocabulary, punctuation and grammar skills.

This is a writing task for VCAL Literacy - public debate. The writing task includes two exemplars for analysing and annotating, as well as planning sheets and other graphic organisers. Included is: PDF document for dissemination to students PDF document for teachers with the task, curriculum links, exemplars and graphic organisers PowerPoint for introducing and teaching the task Rubric I hope you and your students find this unit engaging.

This is a reading task for VCAL Literacy - reading for public debate. The task includes links to a public newspaper article and a persuasive text. Students read both articles and answer comprehension questions aligned to the VCAL Literacy curriculum. Included is: PDF document for dissemination to students PDF document for teachers with the task, curriculum links, articles to read and graphic organisers PowerPoint for introducing and teaching the task I hope you and your students find this unit engaging.

This is a writing task for VCAL Literacy - reading for knowledge. Task uses timelines as the theme for reading for knowledge. Students explore the purpose of timelines and look at two different books with timelines in them to explore the different ways authors can depict timelines and events. Two book titles and authors are included in the planning. If your school or public library doesn’t carry these, you can alternate these for any books with timelines that suits your class’ interests. Included is: Word document for dissemination to students (suitable for distance learning) Word document for teachers with the task, curriculum links and all graphic organisers / templates for printing PowerPoint for introducing and teaching the task I hope you and your students find this unit engaging, practice skills for analysing information to ascertain important information relevant to their interests. Please feel free to change the books to a topic relevant to you and your students’ interests.

This STEAM challenge asks students to design a paper chair that will hold a small stuffed animal. It is sure to get your students thinking about engineering and design concepts to build a chair that can support a weight! Included in the unit: STEAM project resource for the teacher and one for the students Teaching notes PowerPoint slides that cover the explicit teaching of the foundational design and engineering knowledge required to complete the task All documents in both PDF and Word formats for editing / distance learning requirements The teaching notes document is 7 pages long (provided in both PDF and Word formats for editing). The student notes document is 4 pages long (provided in both PDF and Word formats for editing). The Word version can be used for distance learning for students to type directly into the document for easy submission to the teacher. The PowerPoint is 24 slides and includes learning outcomes and teaching slides for you and your students. This challenge uses very minimal resources and is suitable for distance learning models, however you may need to modify the task slightly to remove the group task component so it is an individual task. It is fully achievable as an individual task. I sincerely hope that you and your students enjoy this STEAM challenge!

This unit focuses on teaching students 21st century skills to be successful in adulthood. This is a unit plan with 10 weeks of lessons, with 3 lessons per week. It is intended to be taught as a warm up session at the commencement of your lesson. I am teaching this with my English class, but it could work with other subject areas that focus on applied learning, critical thinking or life skills. • The aim of this unit is to support students’ personal development skills for success in the 21st century. • The skills covered in this unit can be applied to personal and professional life situations. • The lessons and activities are short 5-15min activities conducted at the commencement of each lesson involving individual and collaborative tasks. • The unit covers skills involved with: communication, collaboration, problem-solving, initiative, leadership, flexibility, self-management, life-long learning, planning and organisation, and technological and digital literacy. The lessons can be tweaked to suit your own specific cohort and their needs and abilities. **The resource is 93 slides long and in PowerPoint (PPT) format. ** I sincerely hope that your students gain a lot of life skills from this unit and it provides them with the skills needed to be successful in the 21st century.

This novel study is based on the book: Frindle by Andrew Clements. There is a unit plan included with the novel broken down into 12 lessons, with activities relevant to each lesson/chapter. There are 14 activities included to align with the chapters. This novel study is designed for short 20-30 minute lessons. Learning Intentions and Success Criteria are included for each lesson and align with curriculum. All of the Learning Intention and Success Criteria have been included in the unit plan. The activities are designed for students to build skills in comprehension, vocabulary building and responding to texts. The lesson plans can be tweaked to suit your own specific cohort and their ability levels. The resource is 22 pages long and in PDF format. I sincerely hope that your class enjoys this unit of work. Thank you :)

This is a reading and writing task for VCAL Literacy - public debate. The reading task includes links to a public newspaper article and a persuasive text. Students read both articles and answer comprehension questions aligned to the VCAL Literacy curriculum. A writing task is also included. There are two exemplars included for analysing and annotating, as well as planning sheets and other graphic organisers. Included is: PDF documents for dissemination to students PDF document for teachers with the task, curriculum links, articles to read, exemplars and graphic organisers PowerPoint for introducing and teaching the task Rubrics for both tasks I hope you and your students find this unit engaging.

Astrochimp – David Walliams Novel Study with Resources This novel study is based on the book: Astrochimp by David Walliams. There is a unit plan included with the novel broken down into 12 lessons, with activities/resources included to print to align with the chapters. Extension and fast finisher activities are also available. Learning Intentions and Success Criteria are included for each lesson and align with curriculum. The activities are designed for students to build skills in responding to texts – such as building vocabulary, predicting, recount, chronological recount, different perspectives and comprehension. The lesson plans can be tweaked to suit your own specific cohort and their ability levels. The resource is: 34 pages long 24 activities included Unit plan that breaks the novel down into 12 lessons 12 lessons with guiding questions, learning intentions and success criteria and resources that align to each lesson PDF format. I sincerely hope that you and your students enjoy this unit of work.

This novel study is based on the book: The Christmasaurus by Tom Fletcher. There is a unit plan included with the novel broken down into 19 lessons, with activities relevant to each lesson/chapter. There are 34 activities included to align with the chapters, with extension and fast finishers activities available also. Learning Intentions and Success Criteria are included for each lesson and align with curriculum. All of the Learning Intention and Success Criteria have been included in a printable table at the end of the document for teachers who prefer to print and cut these out for students to glue into their workbooks. The activities are designed for students to build skills in responding to texts - such as building vocabulary, predicting, inferring, recount, different perspectives and problem solving. The lesson plans can be tweaked to suit your own specific cohort and their ability levels. The resource is 76 pages long and in PDF format. I sincerely hope that your class enjoys this unit of work as much as mine has.