Tag: english
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Creating Texts: Stimulus Materials
Over the past few months we’ve started to see more supporting materials make their way to the VCAA Advice for Teachers pages for the 2024 English and EAL Study Design. One of the key additions has been the “stimulus materials” for Unit 3 Outcome 2: Creating Texts. The examples on the VCAA website – three…
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Artificial Intelligence and Film Studies: Midjourney versus CAMELS
CAMELS? As an English teacher, I’ve done a lot of analytical film studies over the years. The biggest problem is always students’ grasp of technical language: film analysis tends to drift off into character and plot description, even more so than for written texts. So, when I teach film, I lean more into my Media…
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Crafting Texts: Ideas
This is the second post in a series which goes deeper into the new VCE English and EAL Crafting Texts outcome. Each post includes some discussion of the Area of Study along with practical lesson ideas. Even if you’re not a VCE English teacher, you’ll find this post useful if you use mentor or model…
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Teaching Writing in the Age of AI: Reinventing English
This is the fifth and final post in the series Teaching Writing in the Age of AI. Check out the other posts in the series: In this series, I’ve explored how teaching writing might change as the adoption of Artificial Intelligence accelerates. Late 2022 was a watershed moment in AI, with ChatGPT pushing generative AI…
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Reading and Exploring Texts: Key Knowledge and Skills Deep Dive
This is a collection of the posts I wrote earlier in the year which explored all of the Key Knowledge and Skills for the new VCE English Unit 1 Area of Study 1: Reading and Exploring Texts. Bookmark this page and refer back to it as you work you way through this new area of…
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Teaching Writing in the Age of AI
With Victoria the latest state to ban ChatGPT, teachers everywhere are grappling with the implications of the large language model and the impact it will have on the classroom. We know that banning and blocking technology is – at best – a temporary solution. Students will find ways around the blocks, and teachers will be…
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Practical Writing Strategies: Sneak Peak
This is an extract from the introduction to Practical Writing Strategies. PWS is written by myself and Benjamin White, and will be published by Amba Press later this year. Introduction What is writing? When Leon wrote Practical Reading Strategies, he started with a seemingly simple question: what is reading? The question came from a Community…
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Reading and Exploring Texts Part 8: Planning and Developing Personal and Analytical Writing about a Text
This series of posts goes through the Key Knowledge and Skills for the new Area of Study 1: Reading and Exploring Texts for VCE English and EAL. Each post has a brief discussion of the Key Knowledge and Skills covered, some suggestions for resources, and five lesson activities. Even if you’re not an English teacher…
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I built an AI Section C generator and the world did not end
If you’ve read any online news recently you’d be forgiven for thinking that we’ve already been back at school for six months, and that ChatGPT has successfully destroyed the education system, killed the essay, and turned every one of our students into a compulsive plagiarist. I’ve written a number of posts about ChatGPT and AI…
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Reading and Exploring Texts Part 7: Engaging in Productive Group Discussions and Debates
This series of posts goes through the Key Knowledge and Skills for the new Area of Study 1: Reading and Exploring Texts for VCE English and EAL. Each post has a brief discussion of the Key Knowledge and Skills covered, some suggestions for resources, and five lesson activities. Even if you’re not an English teacher…