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This edition of mETAphor looks at creative writing, visual literacy, theoretical readings, filmmaking and lots more.
 

Professor of Australian Literature Robert Dixon offers a Lacanian reading of Patrick White’s modernist novel The Aunt’s Story.
 

Susie May from the National Gallery of Victoria demonstrates just how powerful art can be in stimulating creativity with sample student responses.
 

Chrissy Payne shares some strategies she uses to encourage students to stimulate engagement in the English Studies classroom.
 

Karen Yager offers a plethora of original ideas on ways to encourage a spirit of creative writing in the HSC classroom.
 

Deb Simpson uses Tim Winton to show the impact of narrative on environmental campaigns – followed by a classroom exercise b applying these ideas.
 

Stefanie Lia offers practical advice on ways to help students with Herrick’s The Simple Gift
 

Steven Wallis shares his success with Year 8 Gifted class doing filmmaking.
 

Mel Dixon shows how critical pedagogy can give insights into the Module C standard text Billy Elliot
 

Thinking skills, teacher feedback, brain research are some of the important influences on pedagogy that are discussed by Stefanie Lia in this conference reflection with some exercises for the classro...
 

Angela Rose gives insight into Shakespearean audiences in the past.
 

Sian Evans offers accessible definitions of theoretical perspectives and applies these to Katherine Mansfield’s short story ‘Brill’ as an example.
 

Textbooks : Persuasive Language in Media Texts; Macmillan National English Skills; English is… 7; Media Reloaded; The Rough Guide to Graphic Novels; Year 12 English Skills– Student Workbook; Year 11 ...
 

This PowerPoint presentation opens up the processes of meaning making in the discipline of English. It may be useful in mapping the subject for conceptual based programming.
 

This edition of mETAphor covers a great range of topics from the practical to the intellectually engaging for Stages 4 to 6 including: Creative Writing competitions, Visual Literacy, ICT, language, an...
 

Professor Robert Dixon, Professor of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney makes a strong argument about the relationship of a national literature to world literature, locating three dist...
 

Dr Neil James argues that a plain English approach to writing does not diminish its value but enhances it.
 

Aaron Dewhurst and James Brown interview Dr Alison Hoddinott, academic and also friend of Gwen Harwood for insights into her poetry.
 

Derek Peat considers how Nazism places a new slant on the Frankenstein / Blade Runner connection .
 

Rogan Jacobson gives some clues into ways we can use blogs in the classroom.
 

Helen Rainger offers a close reading of Cloudstreet , showing the importance of religion in the text.
 

Find out who won the SMH competition in each region and then read the two stories by winning SMH Young Writer of the Year, 2012, Ashleigh Mounser from Kincumber High School in the Hunter region.
 

Dr Marita Bullock reminds us of the importance of the way we teach visual literacy in this review essay of the book Teaching the Screen , taking us through its strengths and weaknesses and suggesting...
 

Peta Gresham and other teachers from the Kings School travelled to Rwanda for a life changing experience to teach English for the mid year break.
 

Read details of the SWF short story competition for years 7-10 and about the writers who are involved.
 

Award winning Australian novelist, Alex Miller shares some of his sources of inspiration and gives hints on how to help students with creative writing.
 

Cameron Hindrum from Tasmania suggests sensitive ways of dealing with controversial issues in the classroom and using social media as a platform for some discussion.
 

Author Debra Adelaide offers some advice on writing.
 

Derek Peat looks at the impact of the recently revamped Smithsonian website on Module C with some close reading of some of the website pages
 

Aaron Dewhurst offers a new Preliminary (Year11) course outline and lesson plans looking at moral and ethical issues focusing on the TV series Crownie s.
 

John Acutt has written a unit for Year 10 boys mirroring the critical transitional phase of adolescence and of school with writing samples and activities ready to use in the classroom.
 

Bronwyn Taylor explores different ways of responding to the Smithsonian website in line with Module C aims.
 

Joanna Gardiner and Virginia Ayliffe have revitalized poetry teaching and constructed an exciting approach to Romanticism using modern rap poets and showing the influences of the Romantics on this mo...
 

Deanne Seigle-Buyat encourages students to explore the issues in The Crucible through their own classroom organisation.
 

Book Reviews of: Novels : Divergent and Insurgent by Veronica Roth; The Queen’s Lady by Eve Edwards; Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry; The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga; The Testament of Jessie Lam...
 

This edition of mETAphor contains several articles that emerged from the national conference.
 

Jackie Manuel shares her research on teenagers reading patterns and strategies for using this information in the classroom to develop a strong culture of reading.
 

Felicity Plunkett looks at the strong relationship between reading and writing and shows us ways that the one can reinforce the other.
 

The Miles Franklin Literary Award 2012 winner and shortlist with judges’ reports appear here. The winner is Anna Funder with All that I Am . The shortlisted books are: Blood by Tony Birch, Foal’s Bre...
 

Felicity Castagna from Bankstown Youth Development Services has brought together a community of many ethnic groups, reading and writing together and seeing their work published through Westside Publi...
 

Wendy Hardy, the librarian at Hornsby Girls High has created a successful reading space for the students by listening to their needs and giving them the power to create reading events through book gr...
 

Susan Green shares her knowledge and love of reading life writing in this examination of the appeal of life writing. Woolf, Hilary Mantel, Mary Mc Carthy, Patrick White, Carol Shields, Janet Frame, Ju...
 

Christine Gietz applies Kress and Leeuwen’s ideas to teach the visual literacy of advertising, using terms such as: vectors, compositional axis, intimate distance, colour, light, camera angles, frami...
 

Catherine Thomson draws on her experiences as a primary teacher and Curriculum Officer to share the ways reading is taught as part of an effective learning program in primary schools.
 

Derek Peat shares the impact on him of changes to reading with libraries moving into the digital age, eBook and Kindles taking the place of the book.
 

The Kibble Award is for the best woman’s writing and the Dobbie is for a new woman writer. This year’s winners are: Gail Jones for Five Bells and new writer Favel Parrett for Past the Shallows . The ...
 

Darcy Moore talks about the impact of modern technologies on reading and how it has changed our relationship with the book.
 

Jane Sloan takes us through a poetry lesson with Year 9 using a simple haiku to explore the creation of meaning.
 

Stefanie Lia reviews some of the websites available on reading: on how to create a culture of reading, reading for meaning, strategies to improve reading, reading about reading.
 

Angela Casey from the National Museum of Australia ‘reads’ the stories of two objects from the collection – a breastplate, and a t-shirt – and connects these to the English syllabus. This is followed...
 

Andrew Wright shows how reading matters and gives pleasure as a “lived experience” connecting with personal experiences using Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant , Kafka’s A Hunger Artist and Atwood’s The ...
 

Reviews of: NOVELS: Shift by Jennifer Bradbury; The Secret of the Swords, The Poison Plot by Frances Watts; Golden Stranger by Karen Wood; The Grimstones: Hatched by Asphyxia; Haunting Violet by Alyx...
 

This edition of mETAphor focuses on reading and includes articles on research, the social role of reading, the pedagogy of reading and strategies to encourage reading.
 

This issue will give you lots of ideas to take into classroom from Stages 4-6
 

Dr Peter Marks takes us through some of the key issues and the history of writing about Utopia, from Plato’s The Republic to More’s Utopia , Huxley’s Brave New World , Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale an...
 

Steve Henry uses sets of oppositions to explore the Yeats' poems set for study for the HSC.
 

Jane Sloan gives examples of graphic texts that would complement the extension course on life writing and work as suitable related texts.
 

Kath Lathouras follows up on her work on lunes from issue 1, 2012, and shows how to encourage students to be more creative with word choice to crate setting and character.
 

Mel Dixon focuses on language as she addresses some of the descriptors in the Australian Curriculum. Using the Lewis Carroll poem Jabberwocky she shows how sentence order works and the importance of ...
 

Elizabeth Chase offers a development on the idea of the hero suggesting that looking at the “band of heroes” may provide a more effective framework for teaching the concept of the hero in genre ficti...
 

Rogan Jacobsen continues his worksheets on visual literacy this time focusing on film techniques. Each technique is accompanied by an image and an explanation demonstrating how to apply this understa...
 

Chris Davis gives the latest information about PISA tests and her views on how these affect English teaching.
 

Eve Mayes offers thorough explanations accompanied by tables on cohesion, ellipsis, nominalisation, modality, synonyms, allusions, and intertextuality to demonstrate how students can write a comparati...
 

Christine Gietz offers some techniques for responding to and composing poetry, using some interesting poems, and accompanied by sample responses.
 

Bianca Hewes shows how Thornburg’s identification of four archetypal spaces (campfire, watering hole, cave and life) can be used to configure a modern digital classroom while retaining space for othe...
 

Reviews Novels : Back Home (Margorian); Shadows on the Moon (Marriott); The Wrong Boy (Zail); The Hunger Games Trilogy (Collins); Sea Hearts (Lanagan); Past the shallows (Parrett); Ashes (Lasky); Bla...
 

Download draft response here. Please endorse or comment on the response so that we can include any changes to reflect your views more closely.
 

Roselie Arena demonstrates how easy it is to use Technology if it is selected carefully, The Adobe annotation bar, Bubbl.us, Toondoo, Google suite, and Wordle are explained with page shots.
 

Carl Heise from Wagga Wagga describes his experience of teaching young people to become English teachers at Charles Sturt University and offers some advice.
 

Ashley Reynolds who won the Young Writer of the year competition in 2011 has her story “ The River that wasn’t ours” featured in this issue.
 

The Sydney Morning Herald Younger Writer Competition is the new name given to the Write Now competition run with the SMH and the Sydney Writers Festival. The article features three authors who have c...
 

Stefanie Lia dispels myths that Shakespeare is unpopular and gives sound advice based on how to teach Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra based on her experiences in the classroom
 

Kate O’Connor, Mel Dixon, Korrie Duncan and Emma Fielding offer hints on how to organise the teaching year : recording phone contacts, timetable, checking assessment dates, learning names, seating pl...
 

Reviews of Knowledge Quest: English Workbook 1and 2 ; English for the Australian Curriculum Book 2; Requiem: Poems of the Terezin Ghetto by Paul B. Janeczko; Playground: listening to stories from cou...
 

Kath Lathouras shares techniques she learnt in workshops in the US. She explains the relationship between the Robert Kelly Lune, the Jack Collom Lune and haiku and how these structures and other stim...
 

Korrie Duncan shares her creative lessons on teaching persuasive writing . She shows how to scaffold the learning and suggests differentiation for example, using nominalization for students who are a...
 

Felicia Boyages offers a review of the interactive transmedia resource Inanimate Alice and Mel Dixon applies traditional methods of novel study to analyse the text and understand the relationship bet...
 

Deb Simpson and Mel Dixon offer guidelines for teachers approaching the HSC and using the syllabus to organize purposeful lessons. Suggestions are given on how to allay exam anxiety and offer feedback...
 

Rogan Jacobsen offers a worksheet listing many useful terms for studying the graphic novel .
 

Maggie Mangan combines her skills as a Drama and English teacher to offer practical advice on the drama classroom and how to manage students.
 

In this article Kate O’Connor gives guidelines on structuring an essay and suggests practical ways to use ICT to support essay writing.
 

The heading New Teachers Speak out links a few articles sharing the personal views of new teachers on a variety of topics: On finding inspiration in English: ETA Beginning Teachers Scholarship Award;...
 

Rita Van Haren gives a brief overview of the rationale for using thinking tools to develop cooperative learning and then offers some practical examples of what to use and how to use it.
 

This issue of Metaphor is directed to early career teachers and offers practical advice on the wide range of topics that face teachers with a lead article on thinking skills. Articles Cooperative lear...
 

Reviewed in this issue: Textbooks, novels short story book and graphic novel Textbooks : English for the Australian Curriculum Book 1 ; Pearson English 7 ; Pearson English 8 ;
 

This six week unit introduces students to the ideas of postcolonialism through short stories by African women writers: Acholonu and Kabagarama. Research, close readings, guiding questions serve to en...
 

A consideration of this pairing of texts in Module A Advanced, from different contexts, considering Weldon’s fictocritical response, and suggesting some areas of comparison with Austen's Pride and Pr...
 

The period after the bomb produced a wealth of literature, including Waiting for Godot , that responded to and reflected the despair of the period. The article places the play in this context relatin...
 

An overview of the play, Julius Caesar, and ways of approaching Module C. Perspectives of youth and middle age, women and political life, fate and destiny are traced in the play and related texts are...
 

Definitions of representation and perspective provide a framework for a discussion that focuses on the tension in the text Julius Caesar , with suggested scenes for close reading. An analysis of a po...
 

A practical overview of all areas of Module C: representation, context, setting, imagery, perspective, personalities, events, situations, related texts, techniques and notetaking for Wag the Dog .
 

An interview with Kim Scott, the 2011 winner of the Miles Franklin Award who shares some sources of inspiration.
 

Miies Franklin 2011 Shortlist and judges reports: Kim Scott, That Deadman Dancing ; Chris Womersley, Bereft ; Roger Mc Donald, When Colts Ran
 

A reconsideration of Romulus my Father focuses specifically on the representation of the father and mother and considers these in the context of the Area of Study, Belonging.
 

A reading of the W;t/ Donne pairing of texts for Module A and responding to a previous article “Against Certitiude: considering Margaret Edson’s W;t in context” by Mark Howie in 2009, Issue 4.
 

An introduction to website analysis using the websites on Anne Frank and Hana's Suitcase.
 

English Studies Cours e – alternative pathway to those students who do not want to follow an academic line of study. Two pilot schools offer their experiences.
 

This comparative study of two texts from different contexts and different forms foregrounds thinking skills to develop an individual and personal response in this pairing of texts. The theme for stud...
 

Memory and autobiography are central to the discussion on how ‘autobiographical memories structure the narrative and construct character’ and the ‘relationship between memory and identity’ using the ...
 

How to select related texts from a range of text types for Romanticism . A documentary, website, visual art, film picture book, short fiction animated film are all followed by questions that provide ...