Year Level: 9

Lesson in unit: 11

No of lessons: 1

Topic
Creative Writing

Aims

AusVELS

Students create a diary entry or letter based

on their research gained from investigating
the struggle of trench warfare.

Using sources to investigate the difficulties of

trench warfare (ACDSEH021)

Key Vocabulary
Trench warfare
Persuasive techniques
Emotive language
Creative writing

Location / Setting
Classroom

Organisation / Student Groups

- Students sit in their usual table groups
and work individually.
- Students are allowed to talk quietly to
each other.

History

Select and use a range of communication

forms (oral, graphic, written) and digital
technologies (ACHHS175)
Process and synthesise information from a
range of sources for use as evidence in an
historical argument (ACHHS170)
Identify and analyse the perspectives of
people from the past (ACHHS172)

Materials, Resources and Equipment

Individual student laptops
Pens
paper
Australian soldier letters

References/Sources
http://www.smythe.id.au/letters/15_33.htm

INTRODUCTION (10-15 minutes)

Connecting, Engaging and Modelling
Inquiry
Start the lesson off with a brainstorm by
writing Diary entry and Letter on the
whiteboard. Ask students what they think
needs to be included when writing a letter or
a diary entry.
Guiding questions:
- What things do we need to include in a
diary entry?
- How is a letter structured?
- How do we make a diary entry or a letter
personal? (Write in first person, detailed)
- What are the key elements we need to
include? (Emotive language, persuasive
devices etc.)

MAIN BODY (40 minutes)

Guiding Inquiry and Practise
Activity 1: Class discussion on why soldiers
wrote letters home in ww1 and what sort of
things they might have wrote about.
Key questions:
- How do you think the soldiers felt while at
war?
- How might their wives have felt?
- What struggles did they face?
After discussion read a couple of letters from the
front.
First impressions? (Positive or negative?)

On their laptops, students research various

letters written by Australian soldiers in ww1
using the following website:
http://www.smythe.id.au/letters/15_33.htm
They are required to use the letters as a
guide in the next task.
Activity 2: After research, students are
required to start their own creative piece of
writing. Students choose one of the options
to write about:
You are a soldier at ww1. Write a journal
entry or a letter home to a loved one.
OR
Put yourself in the shoes of a World War I
soldier in the trenches and describe what
trench life is like.

CONCLUSION (10 minutes)

Sharing, Explaining and Reviewing
Inquiry
Students share what they chose to write
about.
Their diary entries/letters are due the
following week.
Students first self-assess themselves on
the following, then the teacher provides
feedback and comments using the
Creative writing rubric:
- Communicate clearly and imaginatively,
using and adapting forms for different
readers and purposes.
- Organise ideas into sentences, paragraphs
and whole texts using a variety of linguistic
and structural features.
- Use a range of sentence structures
effectively with accurate punctuation and
spelling.

OR
Write a diary entry from the perspective of a
digger in the trenches
OR
Write a letter home from the trenches on The
Western Front from the perspective of an
Indigenous serviceman.