2040 - Writing the Future

Australian Curriculum content description:

Year 9 English

• Create imaginative, informative and persuasive texts that present a point of view and advance or illustrate arguments, including texts that integrate visual, print and/or audio features (ACELY1746)

Year 10 English

• Create sustained texts, including texts that combine specific digital or media content, for imaginative, informative, or persuasive purposes that reflect upon challenging and complex issues (ACELY1756)

Relevant parts of Year 9 achievement standards: Students create texts that respond to issues, interpreting and integrating ideas from other texts. They make presentations and contribute actively to class and group discussions, comparing and evaluating responses to ideas and issues.

Relevant parts of Year 10 achievement standards: Students create a wide range of texts to articulate complex ideas. They make presentations and contribute actively to class and group discussions, building on others’ ideas, solving problems, justifying opinions and developing and expanding arguments.

Syllabus outcomes: EN5-1A

General capabilities: Literacy, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Capability

Cross-curriculum priority: Sustainability

Unit of work: 2040 – English – Years 7 to 10

Time required: 60 mins

Level of teacher scaffolding: Low – students mostly conduct work in partners or follow worksheet

To view our NZ Curriculum alignment, click here.

• Student Worksheets – one copy per student
• Device capable of presenting a video to the class
• Student devices with internet access. Sticky notes or class access to online collaborative documents
• Butcher’s paper or A3 paper
• Markers
• Storyboard Template (optional)

2040 is an innovative feature documentary that looks to the future, but is vitally important NOW! Director Damon Gameau embarks on a journey to explore what the future could look like by the year 2040 if we simply embraced the best solutions already available to us to improve our planet and shifted them rapidly into the mainstream. 

In Australia: Order the Schools Version of the 2040 DVD. The Schools Version includes an educational license and is for Australian primary and secondary schools that wish to utilise the film as a learning tool or host free on-site screenings for the school community.

In New Zealand: Order the Schools Version of the 2040 DVD. The Schools Version includes an educational license and is for New Zealand primary and secondary schools that wish to utilise the film as a learning tool or host free on-site screenings for the school community.

If you are teaching in either New Zealand or Australia, you can now organise a virtual screening of the film for your class. To enquire about this option, simply email schools@whatsyour2040.com and the 2040 team will help you set this up! If you have already bought a DVD of the film and you have a ClickView account, you can email the team for permission to upload the film to your account to make it more easily accessible for your teachers and students.

Cool.org, GoodThing Productions and Regen Pictures would like to acknowledge the generous contributions of Good Pitch Australia, Shark Island Institute, Documentary Australia Foundation, The Caledonia Foundation and our philanthropic partners in the development of these teaching resources.