Our latest numbers are in, showing the five most viewed ACTF support materials over the past month. Could these popular teaching resources be used in your classroom? 

1. My Place for Teachers

The ‘My Place for Teachers’ website provides rich educational material to support primary and lower-secondary teachers using the My Place TV series in the classroom. The website features cross-curricular teaching materials related to series 1 and 2, and has recently been updated with high resolution clips from all episodes (which teachers can play on tablets and smart phones).

2. MY:24 App

The free MY:24 App allows a user to create their own micro-documentary. It is inspired by the factual entertainment series MY:24 – a collection of stories from young people who have experienced one day that changed their life forever.

The app enables young people to reflect on their own life experiences by creatively telling their own story using a series of basic templates and the in-built technical capabilities of their Apple iOS mobile device.

3. First Day Teaching Toolkit

First Day (2017) follows main character Hannah as she finishes primary school and begins her secondary schooling. Hannah experiences all the excitement and fear associated with this transition, but her first day of high school is even more significant: it’s the first day she will wear a girl’s uniform to school and go by her chosen name, rather than the boy’s name she was given at birth.

The ACTF has developed the First Day Teaching Toolkit to support Year 6 and 7 teachers and students who are using this important film in the classroom. The resource explores key themes from First Day, and helps students to prepare for, process, and reflect on their own transitions to secondary school. The learning tasks encourage inclusive behaviours in the classroom, and reminds students that we are all more alike than we are different.

4. Paper Planes – Novel and Film Comparison

Through this unit of work, written by Wendy Bean, students examine the visual and printed texts of the Paper Planes (feature film and novel). The novel is based on the motion picture screenplay Paper Planes, and is written by Steve Worland.

This unit of work explores a range of themes touched on in the novel and film including loss, relationships, connectedness, friendship, independence and competition. Students are encouraged to generate questions and write about how the themes relate back to them and their own life experiences. Together with this, the unit encourages students to further develop their skills of writing persuasive and procedural texts related to the Paper Planes novel and film.

5. Australian Rules Study Kit

The feature film Australian Rules is adapted from Philip Gwynne’s book, “Deadly Unna?”. The book won the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Book of the Year for Older Readers Award in 1999, and was highly praised for its reconciliation message. The film is a story of mateship and love that is both confronting and sensitive. It clearly takes a strong anti-racist stance.

Australian Rules and the Australian Rules Study Kit is a resource for teachers and students from years 11 through to tertiary years exploring universal themes such as responsibilities and relationships, and issues that go to the core of questions about Australian identity.

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