Vote on Macquarie dictionary’s word of the year
Each year, Australia’s national dictionary – The Macquarie – votes on a new word of phrase that most captures the zeitgeist. There’s a bunch of contenders. You can go through a process where you:
List all the words and first ask students to have a go defining them
Give students the definitions of the words and ask them to rank them from which they most think should be winner through to least
Show students the actual winner and get their comments
This link will help: https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/blog/article/913/
Mini fake news unit
’Tis the season to scam and do deep fakes. So why not teach students about fake news? If you do a quick Google search for ‘fake news teaching units’ or ‘fake news quiz’ you’ll find lots of teaching resources. Here’s one: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zwfm8hv
Short films
We often roll our feature length movies at this time of year, but you can also have a lot of fun looking at short movies. You can have a look at pre-made lesson plans about short films at curriculum sites like this: https://www.intofilm.org/resources/1697
Alternatively, make up your own lessons. We love looking at the symbolism in these two short films:
Dangle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u5NpCYmEiE
Black hole: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5_Msrdg3Hk
‘Best’ lists for 2023
Students can create round ups of their list of ‘best’ things for 2023, such as best TV shows of 2023, best songs of 2023, best things I ate in 2023. It’s a great opportunity to model how ‘best’ lists are written – like this: https://variety.com/lists/best-movies-2023/1-poor-things/ – and to get students to swap, discuss and debate their thoughts.
