Voices of Chasing Asylum - Social Action

This lesson concludes the Voices of Chasing Asylum – Year 11 English unit. It provides students with the opportunity to apply their knowledge to create a social action project or awareness raising campaign around an issue they connected with through the unit. As a result, this lesson can be integrated into a number of subject areas, as the focus is on developing the General Capabilities of the Australian Curriculum and 21st century skills.

General capabilities: Literacy, Critical and Creative Thinking, Personal and Social Capability, Ethical Understanding, ICT Capability.

Cross-curriculum priority:

• Asia and Australia’s Engagement with Asia OI.2, OI.5, OI.7
• Sustainability OI.6

Unit of work: Voices of Chasing Asylum – access the unit overview here.

Time needed: This lesson could take between three and six sessions. Time should be determined prior to commencing the lesson so that students have a clear expectation of the deadline in which to complete their project.

Level of teacher scaffolding: Medium – oversee project planning and project execution.

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

• Creativity
• Critical thinking
• Collaboration
• Social Skills
• Digital literacy
• Enterprise
• Ethical behaviour
• Community engagement
• Problem solving
• Leadership

Chasing Asylum exposes the real impact of Australia’s offshore detention policies through the personal accounts of people seeking asylum and whistleblowers who tried to work within the system. To watch the documentary, stream it on Kanopy and Clickview or purchase the DVD at the ATOM Education Shop.