Year 9 English 2011
Unit 2 – Beyond Borders: Exploring the Self through Diverse Perspectives Length: 8 weeks
The purpose of this unit is to explore the complexities that inform contemporary Australian adolescent identity which is no longer bound by
traditional national borders. Students will look beyond themselves and develop a critical awareness of others’ perspectives to enrich their
understanding of themselves and our world. The unit will meet Australian Curriculum requirements through its exploration of the central
concept of perspectives using contemporary texts from Australia, Asia and America. The Project Zero Teaching for Understanding framework
will underpin the unit encouraging students to think deeply and creatively. The unit will also address the Global Education framework’s
learning emphases interdependence and globalization and Identity and cultural diversity.
Key Questions:
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How does Asia influence our Australian identity?
Why should I want to know more about literature in Asia?
Why adopt a global perspective?
Syllabus Objectives
A student:
1 engages imaginatively
and creatively, critically
and interpretively, with
experience, information
and increasingly complex
ideas and arguments to
respond to and compose
texts in a range of contexts
2 responds to and
composes increasingly
sophisticated and sustained
texts for understanding,
interpretation, critical
analysis, imaginative
expression and pleasure
Content- Learn To/About
Teaching & Core Learning Experiences
Concepts
1.1 reflect on their individual
experience and broadening
views of the world by
responding to the ideas and
arguments of others with
increasingly complex ideas and
arguments of their own [CCT]
engage in wide reading of
self-selected imaginative,
factual and critical texts for
enjoyment and analysis and
share responses in a variety of
relevant contexts, including
digital and face-to-face contexts
[CCT]
1.2
1.3 explain the ways in which
composers transform ideas and
Identity is constructed through language
Perspective:
All texts have a perspective which influenced by culture and
experience.
Texts have diverse perspectives within them.
Text and Context
We must appreciate and understand diverse cultural contexts to
access diverse texts.
Activities
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Cooperative reading activity
Narrative writing
Characterisation
Panel discussion
Analytical paragraph writing
Peer editing
Common
Assessment
Week 8
Modes: Reading &
Writing
Persuasive Opinion
Piece
Task 20%
Sample Question:
Students write an
opinion piece for
publication on the
school’s website
exploring the question:
Why adopt a global
perspective?
6 demonstrates
understanding of the
diverse ways texts can
represent personal and
public worlds
7 questions, challenges and
evaluates how aspects of
culture are represented in
texts and the effects on
meaning
experience into and within
texts, including consideration of
their insight, imaginative
powers and ingenuity [L]
reflect on, extend, endorse
or refute others’ interpretations
of and responses to literature
1.8
the power of language –
understand how language use
can have inclusive and exclusive
social effects, and can empower
or disempower people
1.12
the ways mobile and digital
technologies use and meld
visual images, hyperlinks and
the written word to create
meaning [L, CCT, ICT]
1.13
1.15 higher order concepts –
understand how higher order
concepts are developed in
complex texts through language
features including
nominalisation, apposition and
embedding of clauses
1.17 the ways bias, stereotypes,
perspectives and ideologies are
constructed in texts, including
the codes and phrasings that
signal them [L]
create sustained texts,
including texts that combine
specific digital or media
content, for imaginative,
informative, or persuasive
purposes that reflect upon
2.2
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Youtube clip viewing and discussion
Facebook design
Socratic Circle
Circle of Viewpoints
Persuasive opinion piece
Reflection
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Language: embedded clauses, nominalization, conditional
statements
challenging and complex issues
2.5 present an argument about a
literary text based on initial
impressions and subsequent
analysis of the whole text
2.13 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
how aspects of texts,
including characterisation,
setting, situations, issues, ideas,
tone and point of view, can
evoke a range of responses,
including empathy, sympathy,
antipathy and indifference [L,
CCT]
2.16
2.17 the ways language forms
and features, ideas, perspective
and originality are used to
shape meaning [L, CCT]
6.2 explore and reflect on
personal understanding of the
world and significant human
experience gained from
interpreting various
representations of life matters
in texts
respond to and compose
texts that reflect their
expanding worlds from the
6.4
personal to the public [L, CCT,
IU, EU]
relate the content and ideas
in texts to the world beyond the
texts and appreciate the ways
personal perspective and
context shape meaning in texts
and are shaped by historical,
social and cultural influences [L,
CCT]
6.6
the ways in which their
own responses to texts reflect
their own personal context [L,
CCT]
6.14
interpret and compare how
representations of people and
culture in literary texts are
drawn from different historical,
social and cultural contexts
7.2
respond to and compose
texts to demonstrate their view
of the world by drawing on the
texts of other cultures (for ESL
students, this might include
drawing on texts in their first
language) [L, CCT, PSC, IU, A]
7.8
compose texts that reflect
cultural attitudes other than
their own [L, CCT, IU, PSC]
7.10
7.11 relate the content and ideas
in texts to the world beyond the
texts [L, CCT]
the ways in which
particular texts relate to their
cultural experiences and the
culture of others [L, CCT, PSC,
7.12
IU, A]
7.14 the beliefs and value
systems underpinning texts
from different cultures [L, CCT,
IU, PSC]
the language used to
express contemporary cultural
issues [L, CCT, IU]
7.15
Resources:
Story-wallah: Short Fiction from South Asian Writers, Shyam Selvadurai, ed. 2005 Houghton Mifflin: NY.
Growing Up Asian in Australia, Alice Pung, ed., 2008, Black Ink books, Melbourne.
Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri, Houghton Mifflin, 1999
Games at Twilight, Anita Desai, Vintage Books, London, 1978
Voices Nearby: An anthology of Asia-Pacific Writing, Paul Grover, Ed., Pearson, Melbourne 1997
Words Without Borders: The World Through the Eyes of Writers, Samantha Schnee, Ed., Anchor Books, New York, 2007
From Kinglake to Kabul, Neil Grant and David Williams, Ed. Allen and Unwin, Sydney 2011
Granta The Magazine for New Writing 112 Pakistan, Autumn 2010
In the Sea there are Crocodiles: The story of Enaiatollah Akbari, Fabio Geda, David Fickling Books, New York, 2011
20 under 40: Stories from the New Yorker, Deborah Treisman, Ed. New Yorker Magazine, 2010
Axis of Evil
The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Moshin Hamid, Penguin, London, 2007
Hulabaloo in the Guava Orchard, Kiran Desai
Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai
Midnight’s Children, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Luka and the Fire of Life, Salman Rushdie
Girl in Translation, Jean Kwok
Unpolished Gem, Alice Pung
The Happiest Refugee, Anh Doa
The Boat, Nam Le