I work as a high school teacher and teach across four subject areas: English, English as an Additional Language, Humanities and Creative Writing. I have been teaching for six years and each year is getting easier, mostly because I have now taught across all year levels 7-10 and subject areas and have created resources to support my teaching.
In the first five years of teaching more than 50% of teachers leave the teaching profession. I came dangerously close to becoming a part of this statistic after numerous burn outs throughout my first four years. I want to do something to change this and so every Monday I will be a mentor by sharing my teaching resources and classroom tips.​ Creating resources is where I get to put to use my creativity and my writing background and I want them to have a larger audience. Feel free to share, use and adapt my resources. Persuasive Essay Writing
I have developed a unit for students to write a persuasive essay on the topic of anti-bullying.
Learning Intentions:
Credit
The sentence starter models are based on the book The Student Guide to Writing Better Sentences in the Classroom by Ticking Mind. This book is a incredible resource and I can't recommend it highly enough.​
I have done a few professional learning workshops and bought units of work from Ticking Mind and they are brilliant resources. Newsletter
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I work as a high school teacher and teach across four subject areas: English, English as an Additional Language, Humanities and Creative Writing. I have been teaching for six years and each year is getting easier, mostly because I have now taught across all year levels 7-10 and subject areas and have created resources to support my teaching.
In the first five years of teaching more than 50% of teachers leave the teaching profession. I came dangerously close to becoming a part of this statistic after numerous burn outs throughout my first four years. I want to do something to change this and so every Monday I will be a mentor by sharing my teaching resources and classroom tips.​ Creating resources is where I get to put to use my creativity and my writing background and I want them to have a larger audience. Feel free to share, use and adapt my resources. Integrated Studies Unit-Ancient China and Ancient Egypt
At year 7 we teach history for the first half of the year in our Integrated Studies class and we study Ancient Egypt and Ancient China individually and then complete a comparative essay.
After each unit students complete a unit summary and I provide them with sentence starters. When completing the comparative essay students use a Venn Diagram to decide on their topics, a graphic organiser to collate their research, and a planning essay including sentence starters. I am also including a source analysis sentence starters scaffold. Resources:
Unit Summaries Sentence Starters
Comparative Essay Resources
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I work as a high school teacher and teach across four subject areas: English, English as an Additional Language, Humanities and Creative Writing. I have been teaching for six years and each year is getting easier, mostly because I have now taught across all year levels 7-10 and subject areas and have created resources to support my teaching.
In the first five years of teaching more than 50% of teachers leave the teaching profession. I came dangerously close to becoming a part of this statistic after numerous burn outs throughout my first four years. I want to do something to change this and so every Monday I will be a mentor by sharing my teaching resources and classroom tips.​ Creating resources is where I get to put to use my creativity and my writing background and I want them to have a larger audience. Feel free to share, use and adapt my resources. Poetry Analysis
This unit takes students through the process of reviewing poetic techniques, learning about what a poetry analysis is, analysing three poems and includes scaffolds to help them write their analysis, and a modified scaffold for students who need extra support.
The three poems are:
​Included are PowerPoints that take students through the background context and include information about the poets. Out of the Blue PowerPoint
No More Boomerang PowerPoint
Charge of the Light Brigade PowerPoint
Poetry Analysis Booklet
Learning Intentions:
Credit
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I work as a high school teacher and teach across four subject areas: English, English as an Additional Language, Humanities and Creative Writing. I have been teaching for six years and each year is getting easier, mostly because I have now taught across all year levels 7-10 and subject areas and have created resources to support my teaching.​
In the first five years of teaching more than 50% of teachers leave the teaching profession. I came dangerously close to becoming a part of this statistic after numerous burn outs throughout my first four years. I want to do something to change this and so every Monday I will be a mentor by sharing my teaching resources and classroom tips. Creating resources is where I get to put to use my creativity and my writing background and I want them to have a larger audience. Feel free to share, use and adapt my resources. Writing Scary Stories
I love teaching creative writing. It's my happy place and it's where all my skills as an author come into play. I developed the following unit for my year 9 EAL class and it worked a treat to get them to write an effective scary story.
I embedded grammar skills within the unit in order to get them to learn application in relation to their stories. The way I teach creative writing is to break each section into seperate sections so first they develop a character and setting in order to write an orientation. Then they write the climax of the story and then resolution. I provide scaffolds for each stage of the writing process and this is their draft as I go through and provide feedback. Then they put their final stories together with all the elements. Learning Intentions:
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I work as a high school teacher and teach across four subject areas: English, English as an Additional Language, Humanities and Creative Writing. I have been teaching for six years and each year is getting easier, mostly because I have now taught across all year levels 7-10 and subject areas and have created resources to support my teaching.
In the first five years of teaching more than 50% of teachers leave the teaching profession. I came dangerously close to becoming a part of this statistic after numerous burn outs throughout my first four years. I want to do something to change this and so every Monday I will be a mentor by sharing my teaching resources and classroom tips. ​Creating resources is where I get to put to use my creativity and my writing background and I want them to have a larger audience. Feel free to share, use and adapt my resources. 
In Year 7 English we teach Two Wolves by Tristan Bancks as a text and get students to write a Text Response Essay. This is a great young adult novel that deals with deep themes around family, ethics and morality,
Pre Reading Activity
Pre-reading worksheet attached below
This is a pre-reading activity we developed to teach address the ethical capabilities and discuss the concepts of Ethics, Morals and Morality. I have taught it twice with two different year 7 classes and it was great fun. I love playing devil's advocate with students and asking them to justify their answers.
Cornell Summary Notes
While studying the text students create Cornell Summaries for chapters. I give them the first two lots to write up in their notebook, and create a modified version for students to write out some parts, and copy and paste the rest.
Then I get students to work in groups to create Cornell summaries with the headings: Characters, Themes, Setting, Important Quotes. ​ I give them the important quotes and support them by adding feedback to the Cornell notes. These notes are then given to each student to use for their text response. Table of contents:
Modified student activities
I have created a booklet of modified activities for students who are not able to participate in group work to create Cornell notes. I bind a copy of this and get them to complete the activities and copy out the chapter summaries in their notebooks.
Text Response Essay Scaffolds
When students are undertaking writing activities I provide scaffolds with sentence starters to support them and then slowly remove these as they build up their skills.
I teach students to write TEEL paragraphs first and then the introduction. For modified students I provide the evidence for them and get them to fill in the rest. Attached is a booklet with the activities that I teach to undertake writing activities. ​ Table of Contents:
​The sentence starter models are based on the book The Student Guide to Writing Better Sentences in the Classroom by Ticking Mind. This book is a incredible resource and I can't recommend it highly enough. I have done a few professional learning workshops and bought units of work from Ticking Mind and they are brilliant resources. Newsletter
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On the 25 May 2019 my memoir Things Nobody Knows But Me published by Transit Lounge was launched by Alice Pung at an event hosted by the Sun Bookshop. I was overwhelmed by how many people attended representing all the facets of my life. There were former teachers, former classmates, former workmates, current workmates, writing group mates, online friends, real life friends, writing community friends. It was a perfect day and I was so thankful that my friends and family were there to support me. I filmed Alice Pung's speech for my launch and you can view it below as well as my speech and a reading of the prologue to my memoir.  It's not a party without balloons.  I had a dream of a bookcake and a book table and it came true. I had a grand vision for my book launch in that I wanted a book table to really celebrate the launch of my book. To that end I ordered a book cake with my cover printed on top from Ferguson Plarre and it turned out beautifully. I also made custom bookmarks that I designed myself using Canva and then had printed by Dark Horse Print and Design. I wanted the table to be coordinated and so created my own bunting flags by using the custom quotes that I had created using Canva and printed these in colour and glued them onto poster paper to make the border. I also couldn't forget the dress. I ordered this dress from eShakti an online store that allows all dresses to be customised with length, sleeves and neckline. I was so happy with how comfortable and lovely my dress was on the day.  Quotes that I used to make bunting flags to decorate my cake table.  I so desperately wanted a book cake and I was so happy that the red velvet cake from Ferguson Plaire tasted delicious too.  Things bookmarks that I designed and had printed.  I've made national news with an article about my memoir is featured in http://news.com.au
‘Mum locked us in a room — then the police took her’: Our frightening family secret #thingsnobodyknowsbutme#Mentalhealth #bipolar #memoir |
AuthorAmra Pajalić is an award-winning author, an editor and teacher who draws on her Bosnian cultural heritage to write own voices stories for young people, who like her, are searching to mediate their identity and take pride in their diverse culture. She writes memoir, young adult and romance under the pen name Mae Archer. newsletterSign up and receive free books.
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