Here is a resource parcel for your senior students aimed at giving them extensive practical help in responding in essay form to the characters and themes of Arthur miller's THE CRUCIBLE. It consists of six items which can be used together as culmination of a unit on the play prior to students writing their own analytical response. This is practical material aimed at enabling your students to practice their writing skills using stimulating exemplars and scaffolded handouts with construction guidelines and content prompts. 1. A closely annotated exemplar of a top standard formal essay on the themes of THE CRUCIBLE, with explanatory pointers on structure, content and wording 2. A powerpoint containing do's and don'ts when students write their essay - it contains specific parts of THE CRUCIBLE to make the points 3.Four scaffolded practice essay handouts - two on characters and two on themes. These are colour coded to guide construction, and have prompt points to assist in the content

For English and historyteachers and values educators, this power point resource is a pre-timed examination of how we perceive the world, containing stills, animation and challenges for the class to respond to. It is approximately four minutes in length, featuring some of history's best examples of visual illusions, and examines how we see the world in ways that can be inaccurate and distorted. The final slides cover stereotyping and false judgements. The presentation will be useful as a stimulus / starter, getting students to consider how perception and reality are not always the same. Useful for literature studies on racial attitudes, discrimination based on perceived difference and flawed thinking leading to injustice. For example - "To Kill A Mockingbird," "1984," "Brave New World," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" Useful for values classes in social studies, philosophy and ethics classes.

Handout sheet for discussion and analysis on Oscar Wilde's chief character quotes in "The Picture of Dorian Gray." Useful for analysing Wilde's witty inversion of the superficial and the profound, and the tragic perspective of the character's doomed efforts to retain that which is impossible - the lustre of youth and the invincible appeal of physical beauty.

As a weekly projected screen image to greet the week as the students enter class, or as a study resource to examine the language of inspiration and uplifting aphorism, this 56 slide power point is aimed to engage students with proverbs centered on themes like persistence, life long learning, planning and tolerance. The quotes are accompanied with visually arresting art, photography and animation, and are good discussion starters for talking about ethics, responsibility and the individual’s relationship to society. The level of language is aimed at secondary students in middle and senior school. I personally find that it is particularly effective in humanities, philosophy and legal studies classes, and have used some of the visuals for creative writing stimulus, in which the students respond to the moral and ethical point of the proverb with a narrative or personal reflection that reflects the idea. As a long term debating coach, I have used the material for end - of - week classroom debates, with the students contesting the ethical / logical implications of the nominated proverb.

THE POETRY OF WAR - COMPLETE UNIT In Depth Power Point (one lesson)- overview of the evolution of attitudes and representations in war poetry, from the Victorian patriotic versifiers to the oppositional school of World War One, and up to the the poetry of the nuclear age and the anti-war poems of the Vietnam War era. Focus is on the values and assumptions of the different time periods, and how poetry reflects the time in which it is written. The presentation is composed of fifty slides, introducing the key poetic terms, ideological disposition of each generation, the landmark poets and their achievements, and how poets can be social legislators, not just reflecting their times but influencing them. STUDENT STUDY GUIDE (completely self contained unit of work - approximately 3 weeks - 18 strongly illustrated pages of activities, with comprehension activities for each poem, exemplar essays on two of the poems, a practice essay rubric providing a paragraph by paragraph structured response, and discussion stimulus pages. Poems covered - “The Charge of the Light Brigade” - Tennyson “The Soldier” - Rupert Brooke “The Rear Guard” - Siegfried Sassoon “Dulce Et Decorum Est” / “Exposure” - Wilfred Owen “The Grave”* - Don McLean “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda”* - Eric Bogle “Men in Green” - David Campbell “Your Attention Please” - Peter Porter “I Feel Like I’n Fixin’ To Die Rag”* - Joe Macdonald Items marked with an asterisk are verses that have been used as song lyrics - students will further engage with the material if the easy-to-find Youtube clips of these being performed are used as part of the instruction. For those wishing to go beyond a reading study of the handout text, the items set to music will enhance enjoyment and the visual presentation in the clips will give contextual clues so that students can connect the poetry to social information.

This is a complete unit of study for students studying Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World,’ in the form of a 20 page, highly visual analysis of the novel covering all elements of the plot, characters and themes, engaging students in wide ranging activities including crossword, vocabulary building, text comprehension, extended writing and visual literacy tasks. In addition, there are activities in paragraph writing, comparative literary analysis using Orwell’s ‘1984,’ practice essay topics and personal response questions about the contemporary relevance of Huxley’s warnings. The study guide aims to extend students by engaging students in a range of enquiry and writing skills in designated sections - justifying, researching, comparing and contrasting, identifying cause and effect, drawing conclusions and making inferences. This is a practical work unit that uses eye appealing graphics and a graduated level of difficulty to enable students through a guided close analysis of the literary elements of the novel to be able to make their own substantiated conclusions to the writer’s themes and purpose.

Year 10- 12 Term Unit to guide students in close literary analysis of the novel through a variety of visually engaging activities on plot, characters, themes, setting, literary and language elements, vocabulary building, comparing and contrasting with other texts, extension exercises for able students, crossword with answers, and individual chapter summaries each with comprehension questions. 27 page student study guide - activities on each numbered page - answers for all questions in teacher powerpoint. Material is cumulative to develop understanding from literal to metaphorical, and unit can be used as a self- directed program with students working at their own pace or as teacher directed learning for whole class progression. Teacher powerpoint contains all answers to all activites One Master Powerpoint for teacher - contains answers to comprehension questions. One powerpoint - crossword answers Class activity (pre or post reading task) ‘Personal Reflection - Issues in LORD OF THE FLIES’ to connect student experience with understanding of concepts & themes in the novel. Study Guide Contents (each section containing text comprehension testing with answers for all questions in teacher powerpoint (i) Background to the Novel (ii) Language and vocabulary - terms to know (iii) Setting in the Novel (iv) Charcter Analysis (a) Ralph (b) Jack (c) Simon (d) Piggy (v) Literary Techniques (a) symbolism (b) foreshadowing (vi) Themes and Ideas in the Novel (vii) Extension activity - Where Is the Beast? Neuroscience and the novel (viii) Revision Crossword (ix) Extension activity - Poetry on the theme of Lord of the Flies (x) Chapter Questions - Separate analysis for each of the twelve chapters