English Units:Years 9-10
Oral language units
Hearwaves
A unit with a listening focus which involves students in analysing the language used to target audiences in a variety of radio stations. Students then produce a radio station which is used to assess the listening skills of their classmates.
Listen up! Speak up!
This unit provides a structured approach to build students' confidence in public speaking. Students participate in a series of increasingly demanding speaking and listening activities which prepare them to deliver their speech to their classmates.
The power of the real world
The unit is a thematic study focusing on non-fiction genres - autobiography, biography and diary. It is differentiated to suit a range of ability groups and includes group work and practice in higher order questioning. Assessment is based on interpersonal speaking and presenting as demonstrated in class seminars.
Up close and personal - autobiography/biography
In this unit students will read a biography or autobiography of their own choice and share it with their classmates through a wall poster and an oral presentation. An optional transactional writing assignment is also included.
You're the expert
A speaking unit in which students use their own research as the basis of a seminar to be delivered to their classmates.
Visual language units
A life of struggle: Mihipeka - the early years
Mihipeka is a engaging, non-fiction text which presents a challenging view of life through the eyes of a young, rural Maori woman in the early twentieth century. As a culmination of the unit, students present a static image which communicates key ideas from the text.
As far as the eye can see
This unit is dedicated to the viewing strand. It encourages our junior students to become active viewers and critical thinkers about the advertising world.
Conflict and war
This unit involves a study of war poetry from the first world war through to the Vietnam war. It also covers the study of the film Gallipoli leading to visual language viewing assessment. Students write their own poetry and short stories and eventually write a transactional essay discussing verbal and visual features of Gallipoli.
Documentary viewing
This unit is designed to help students understand the concept of a documentary as 'constructed reality'. Students view, respond to and analyse news and documentary programmes.
Making movies
The aim of this unit is for students to produce an original short video after first studying the construction of other selected television texts.
Risks and challenges
Using a variety of resources, students explore different situations that involve people overcoming personal fear, apprehension, facing a risk, meeting a challenge, making a crucial choice, etc. Their consideration of such situations through discussion and group work will lead to a crafted piece of poetic writing and a static image.
Social and political cartoon satire
This unit aims to promote student understanding of how the visual and verbal messages of social and political cartoons can be interpreted within historical and cultural contexts.
Survival of the fittest
Students develop an "Archetypal Survivor Profile" through brain storming, discussion and research of true-life survival stories. A comparison of this profile is then made with that of a fictional character, studied in the context of a novel where survival is a theme. Chosen from among many possibilities, Gary Paulsen's Hatchet is used as the focus novel for this unit.
The power of the real world
The unit is a thematic study focusing on non-fiction genres - autobiography, biography and diary. It is differentiated to suit a range of ability groups and includes group work and practice in higher order questioning. Assessment is based on interpersonal speaking and presenting as demonstrated in class seminars.
Up close and personal - autobiography/biography
In this unit students will read a biography or autobiography of their own choice and share it with their classmates through a wall poster and an oral presentation. An optional transactional writing assignment is also included.
WebAd-diction
A unit with a viewing focus, where year 10 students explore several types of advertisements found on the Internet. The aim of the unit is to enable students to critically analyse the advertising material they are exposed to on the Internet - and elsewhere.
Written language units
Celebrate good times, come on!
This unit provides a structured approach to developing students' creative writing skills. Students will use a series of pre-writing activities to complete a piece of creative writing based on a celebration they have experienced.
Logging up reading mileage!
A flexible 'pick and mix' unit designed to encourage students' personal reading. It includes a range of assessable activities which allow teachers to develop personal reading programmes to suit individual students' abilities and needs.
Poems, poems, everywhere
A unit designed to stimulate and encourage poetry writing and publishing in a mixed-ability class.
Read away
A unit in which students choose either a fiction or non fiction book to read and use it to complete pre, during and after reading responses. Assessment focuses on the close reading of a selected passage with a model provided.
Risks and challenges
Using a variety of resources, students explore different situations that involve people overcoming personal fear, apprehension, facing a risk, meeting a challenge, making a crucial choice, etc. Their consideration of such situations through discussion and group work will lead to a crafted piece of poetic writing and a static image.
Survival of the fittest
Students develop an "Archetypal Survivor Profile" through brain storming, discussion and research of true-life survival stories. A comparison of this profile is then made with that of a fictional character, studied in the context of a novel where survival is a theme. Chosen from among many possibilities, Gary Paulsen's Hatchet is used as the focus novel for this unit.
The Fat Man
This unit uses The Fat Man by Maurice Gee as a basis for developing students' understanding and appreciation of the different components of a novel. It is also designed to equip students with the transactional writing skills needed in the NCEA. The activities involved can be easily adapted for use with other works of fiction.
What's the problem?
Using a range of information and communication technologies, students carry out an investigation into teenage problems to provide material for a piece of transactional writing for publication.
Writing for publication
A unit in which students are encouraged to explore their language options in the process of crafting a piece of poetic writing to publication standard. This version of the unit is assessed against curriculum levels 4-6 but could be adapted for use at other levels.
Other units
Shakespeare's England
Prior to the study of a Shakespearean play, students research an aspect of Shakespearean England and present their findings to classmates.
