A Guide to this Blog

This blog can be roughly divided up into four categories: English teaching, History teaching, general teaching, personal. I update the list below monthly as a road-map for previous blog entries.

Teaching

General
STEM Sells
What Could I Be Doing Differently?
Teaching: The Demographic Approach
The Honeycomb Matrix
Pushing for Depth in Our Students' Thinking
Ten Things We Should Say Everyday (and Why They're Important)
Sydney Writers Festival 2017: MCA Zine Fair
Gender and Literacy (Sarah McDonald)

Things That Have Worked for Me
Classroom Schematics
Settling Routines
Things to Look For

Assessment
New Assessment Approaches in Stage 6 English
Paperman and Assessment FOR Learning
How to Help Students Achieve in Assessment Tasks
Marking Metalanguage
Making Feedback a Big Rock
Differentiation: Using Assessment for Learning
Ways of Assessing Giftedness (Ignite the Spark 2018 Conference)
Differentiation in Stage 6 Assessment (Ignite the Spark 2018 Conference)
Incorporating Drafting into Extended Response Assessment Tasks

English
The English Book Room

AATE/ALEA Hobart Conference 2017
Blueback Bunting
ETA Conference 2015 
ETA Conference 2017
Engaging with Drama in the English Classroom
Twenty Great Graphic Novels: Literacy and Multimodal Narratives
Mountains of Stories: The Role of Creative Writing in the West 

2019-2023 HSC English Prescriptions
HSC English - Prescribed Texts 2019-2023

A New Canon?
Standard and Advanced English Common Module: Texts and Human Experiences
Standard English Module A: Language, Identity and Culture
Standard English Module B: Close Study of a Text
Standard English Module C: The Craft of Writing 

Advanced English Module A: Textual Conversations
Advanced English Module B: Critical Study of Literature
Advanced English Module C: The Craft of Writing

Extension English 1 Elective 1: Literary Homelands

Extension English 1 Elective 2: Worlds of Upheaval

Extension English 1 Elective 3: Reimagined Worlds

Extension English 1 Elective 4: Literary Mindscapes

Extension English 1 Elective 5: Intersecting Worlds

A Path of Light and Joy

Patterns of Study in HSC English - Reflections and Ideas

The Craft of Writing
Craft of Writing - a Program

Guide to Craft of Writing, and Associate Resources
Discursive Writing

Asyndeton
Parentheses
Hyperbaton
Modality, Pathetic Fallacy, and Iambic Pentameter 
Brachyology, Shared Lines, and Congery
Irony and Symbolism
Ellipsis, Anthimeria, and Antithesis
Stream of Consciousness, Reported Speech, and Anadiplosis

Allusion, Tmesis, and Euphemism 

Motif, Intertextuality, and Synaesthesia

Year 12 Common Module: Texts and Human Experiences
The Common Module: The Merchant of Venice
Incorporating Drafting into Assessment Tasks
Orwell, Stalin, and the History Paradox
Nineteen Eighty-Four Infographic
Related Text Ideas
Modelling Essay Writing: The Merchant of Venice

Year 11 Common Module: Reading to Write
Reading to Write - a Program

Authors and Authority
'Wake' by Tim Winton

Discursive Writing

Textual Conversations
Overview of Textual Conversations: The Tempest and Hag-Seed
The Tempest Annotated
The Tempest and Hag-Seed Infographic
Hag-Seed: Textual Conversations with The Tempest'

Conversations about Hag-Seed

Extension 1 - Year 12

The Literary Canon - What's In It?

Using Schemas with Related Texts

Writing in Response to the Literary Homelands Prescribed Texts

Literary Homelands Essay Response

Overview of Literary Worlds Common Module

HSC Literary Worlds: Ergodic Literature

Punk Punk - A Gallery of Subgenres
Eileen Chong and ars poetica
The Secret River: A Study Guide
The White Tiger: A Study Guide 

Extension 1 - Year 11
Everything Old is New Again

Dracula: Texts, Culture and Value - Term 1 Unit of Work
Dracula: Texts, Culture and Value - Term 2 Unit of Work 
Dracula: Study Guide to the Novel
Dracula: 2018 ETA Presentation
The Lost Boys: Critical Readings
The Lost Boys: Study Guide
That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! - A Study Guide for Chapters 1-3

English Studies:
English Studies - Your Friend and Mine
Authentic Assessment as Learning: English Studies Day 2016 Presentation
Fostering Engagement with English Studies (On the Road)
English Studies - What it Was, and Where It's Going 

Literacy
'August Heat' - Short Story with Super Six Strategies
Focus on Reading and Super Six Strategies
Pushing the Paragraph

Scaffolding Paragraph Construction
Categorising Heroes: Literacy, the Soviet Union, and Differentiation
Analysing Text to Facilitate Better Writing

Teaching Embedded Clauses
Using Text Chains
Literacy and the Orca
Stand-Alone Lesson: 'Parents Just Don't Understand'

Peace Train - Reading Comprehension

Creative Writing
Engaging Writers in the Classroom (Dr Steven L. Layne)
Sizzling Starts

Reinforcing an Idea
Write Right Workshop and Resources 
Galway Man: Stage 5 English (Model Text)

Guided Storywriting  

Visual Literacy

Poster Analysis #1: The Jungle Book
Poster Analysis #2: Ant-Man

English Textual Concepts Framework:
English Textual Concepts
The Processes
English Textual Concepts: Point of View 

Introducing Year 7 to the Concept of Literature  

Teaching Film:
The Film Canon - What's In It?

The Canons: The Oscars - Best Film

Mise en Scene - The Sapphires

Making a Zoetrope

Documentary Techniques in Blackfish

The Use of Rhetoric in Documentaries
Close-Ups
The 180 Degree Rule

Film History: Early Editing #1
A Brief History of Wake in Fright
Film Craft: Teaching Film as a Skill

The Truman Show: Analysing Shots

Poster Analysis #1: The Jungle Book
Poster Analysis #2: Ant-Man

Years 7-10 English Activities:

Teaching Context for Stage 4

See, Think, Wonder

Socratic Circles in the Classroom
Extending Stage 4 Students in English

Bill and the Beast: Building Vocabulary

Connotation

Happy Halloween: Tag Someone

Making Stronger Arguments - Stage 4
Teaching Theme with Year 9

Charity and Change - Drama Extract

Guided Storywriting

Introducing Year 7 to the Concept of Literature

'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas'

Advertising
Online Media - How Does it 'Get' You?

Teaching Advertising with Nathan For You
Teaching Modes of Persuasion with Nathan For You
Target Audiences, Context and Mad Men 

Shakespeare

Unlocking Shakespeare

Romeo & Juliet: A New Translation

Critical Study of a Text: Hamlet (Revision)
Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet: 9 Things That Stand Out
Fruit and Shakespeare: Things I Learned in Bundanoon
Macbeth and Theme
Macbeth: A New Translation
The Tempest as ars poetica
The Tempest Annotated
The Common Module: The Merchant of Venice 

Holes

Teaching 'Setting' in Holes

Jasper Jones
Narrative Voice and Jasper Jones

A Monster Calls
Annotating the Class Novel  

Go Back to Where You Came From (Discovery)
Modelled Analysis of Go Back to Where You Came From

1984 and Metropolis (Intertextual Perspectives)
Metropolis - A Study Guide
Laying a Foundation: 1984 and Context 
1984 and Context: Mix and Match
Tricolon: Rhetorical Technique in 1984
Antimetabole: Rhetorical Technique in 1984
Metropolis Context 
Metonym: Figurative Technique in Metropolis
Characters of 1984 
Modelled Analysis of 1984 and Metropolis 

HSC: Text and Representation
W.H. Auden (Revision)

Animal Farm and Elysium:
Elysium: ETA 2016 Presentation
Matching Russian Timeline to Animal Farm
Comparative Study of Elysium and Animal Farm
Elysium - Comprehension Questions
Elysium - Connotation and Invented Lexicon
Elysium - Characterisation and Representation of Ideas
Elysium - Allegory, Allusion and Satire

History
HTA State Conference 2015

Researching for History Curriculum

History and Film

Australian History:
The History Wars
Pre-Contact Aboriginal History 

The Cultural Revolution to the Tiananmen Square
Change in the Modern World, Option B: China
Political and Social Conditions in China
Building the Field: China 1966-1989
The Sino-Soviet Split and Anti-Revisionism
Significant Figures: China 1966-1989 
Deng and Mao: Changing Political Standing 
Getting to Grips with the Cultural Revolution
Evaluating the Cultural Revolution
Tiananmen Square: Ideology and Evaluation
Impact of the Tiananmen Square Incident 

Creating a Unit: The Rise of China
The Rise of China: HTA 2016 Presentation
Conception
Outline
Lesson Planning
Lesson 1
Lesson 2
Lesson 3
Lesson 4
Lesson 5
Lesson 6
Lesson 7

World War I:
Turning Points of WWI
Why Germany Lost WWI

Women on the Australian Home Front in WWI

World War II:

WWII Australian Home Front Map

Trotsky, Russia and the Soviet Union:
Incorporating Drafting into Assessment Tasks
All Power to the Soviet
Evaluating how Trotsky Faced Challenges
That Pesky Russian Vocabulary
Collectivisation Source Analysis
Society in 1930s Stalinist Russia
Trotsky and the Splitting of the Socialist Democratic Workers' Party
Breadth and Depth
Stalin's Purges: Making Connections 

The Atlantic Slave Trade

Source Analysis - a Scaffold

Conflict in the Pacific:
HSC Questions
An Objective History of the Conflict in the Pacific
The Battles
Allied Occupation of Japan: The War Crimes Tribunal

History Concepts:
Cause and Effect
Source Analysis using Grammar
Source Analysis - a Scaffold

Breadth and Depth

Pompeii and Herculaneum:
History and Archaeology

What is History?/History Extension:
Post-Post-Modernism
Approaching the 'What is History' module
Palmyra: Past, Present and Future

Big History:
Big History and Me

Personal


Book Journeys
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Freddy Lombard by Yves Chaland 
Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
Grendel by John Gardner
Greybeard by Brian Aldiss

Travel

U.S.A./Mexico 2014
Day 1 (Los Angeles)
Day 2 (San Diego)
Day 3 (Blythe)
Day 4 (Arizona)
Day 5 (Sedona)
Day 6 (Tuba City)
Day 7 (Grand Canyon)
Day 8 (Camp Verde)
Day 9 (Camp Verde)
Day 10 (Phoenix)
Day 11 (Mexico City)
Day 12 (Teotihuacan)
Day 13 (Oaxaca)
Day 14 (Oaxaca)
Day 15 (Monte Alban)
Day 16 (San Cristobal de las Casas)
Day 17 (Chiapis del Corzo)
Day 18 (Palenque)
Day 19 (Palenque)
Day 20 (Merida)
Day 21 (Chichen Itza)
Day 22 (Tulum)
Day 23 (Playa del Carmen)
Day 24 (Cancun)
Day 25 (Isla Mujeres)
Day 26 (Houston)

U.S.A. 2015:
Day 1 (San Francisco)
Day 2 (San Francisco)
Day 3 (Yosemite)
Day 4 (Nevada)
Day 5 (Cedar City)
Day 6 (Utah)
Day 7 (Tuba City)
Day 8 (Arizona)
Day 9 (Zuni Lands)
Day 10 (Roswell)
Day 11 (Texas)
Day 12 (Dallas)
Day 13 (Dallas)

Australia 2018-2019
Dipping Our Toes into Victoria (Beechworth, VIC)
Of Tumut, Tiny Frogs, Trouts, and a Terrifying Lack of Bookstores (Snowy Mountains, NSW)
Eden: Paradise and Purgatory by the Sea  (Eden, NSW)
On Bookstores and the Argyle Emporium (Goulburn, NSW)
The Lure of the Lighthouse (Green Cape, NSW)
To the North (North Coast, NSW)

Other 
Random Rules for Writing

This is How it Starts... (COVID-19)
The Obscure and Forgotten - Speculative TV Fiction
On Grief
Adam Goodes and Bi-Cultural Pride
As Thick as a Brick

Goodbye Target
Fruit and Shakespeare: Things I Learned in Bundanoon
Of Mice and Pens 
2015 - My Year in Reading
January-March, 2016 - Reading Roll
April-June, 2016 - Reading Roll
July-December, 2016 - Reading Roll
January-March, 2017 - Reading Roll
Late 2017/Early 2018 - Reading Roll
Twenty Great Graphic Novels

Top Reads for 2020 - Reading Roll
Top Reads for 2021 - Reading Roll

So Long to 2022, Hello to 2023