Resilient Australia - To Create Change You Need To Be Heard - Write A Letter To The Editor

Australian curriculum content descriptions: 

Years 7 English:

• Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts, selecting aspects of subject matter and particular language, visual, and audio features to convey information and ideas (ACELY1725).

Years 8 English:

• Create imaginative, informative and persuasive texts that raise issues, report events and advance opinions, using deliberate language and textual choices, and including digital elements as appropriate (ACELY1736).

Syllabus outcomes: EN4-4B.

General capabilities: Literacy.

Cross-curriculum priority: Sustainability.

Relevant parts of Year 7 achievement standards:
Students understand how the selection of a variety of language features can influence an audience. They understand how to draw on personal knowledge, textual analysis and other sources to express or challenge a point of view. They create texts showing how language features and images from other texts can be combined for effect. Students create structured and coherent texts for a range of purposes and audiences.

Relevant parts of Year 8 achievement standards: 
Students understand how the selection of language features can be used for particular purposes and effects. They explain the effectiveness of language choices they make to influence the audience. Through combining ideas, images and language features from other texts, students show how ideas can be expressed in new ways. Students create texts for different purposes, selecting language to influence audience response.

Level of teacher scaffolding: Medium – teacher will need to facilitate a discussion about the power of young people to enact social change, and guide students through the Letter to the Editor checklist.

• A device capable of presenting a video to the class and projecting a document to the class

This lesson is designed to build students’ competencies in the following skills:

• Communication
• Community engagement
• Critical thinking
• Digital literacy
• Empathy
• Initiative

We encourage you to undertake the free PD Course How to teach a unit on fire and flood resilience for tips on how to best deliver this lesson.
If you’re concerned about the challenging nature of these topics, consider the free PD Course How to approach trauma in the classroom for information on how best to support your students.

This lesson was made in partnership with Minderoo Foundation (www.minderoo.org)