English - Unit 1: Digital Detectives & News Hounds - LESSON PLANS - Year 4

Tired of spending your weekends planning? Transform your Year 4 English lessons with this complete, 9-week inquiry-based unit that brings media literacy, critical thinking and digital creation to life!

Step into the world of "Unit 1: Digital Detectives & News Hounds," a comprehensive English unit designed to save you time and deeply engage your Year 4 students. This unit focuses on building a strong foundation in understanding informative texts, distinguishing fact from opinion, analysing visual and digital media and creating news reports.

Packed with creative, hands-on activities, this unit will transform your classroom into a dynamic, inquiry-based learning space where students don't just learn about the news—they become critical consumers and creators as digital detectives, researchers and confident reporters.

What's Inside?

This 9-week unit is meticulously planned to help you deliver exceptional English lessons with confidence. You will find:

• 9 Weeks of Engaging Lesson Plans: Guide your students through a journey of discovery, from conducting 'Fact vs. Feeling' investigations, analysing headlines, building 'Story Pyramids', conducting live interviews and publishing their work on a class news website or TV segment.
• Australian Curriculum Aligned: This unit is fully aligned with the Year 4 English curriculum. It explicitly covers key content descriptors including AC9E4LA02 (Subjective/Objective Language), AC9E4LA03 (Text Stages/Features), AC9E4LA05 (Online Text Features), AC9E4LA07 (Quoted/Reported Speech), AC9E4LA10 (Image Composition), AC9E4LA12 (Dialogue Punctuation), AC9E4LY03 (Text Purposes), AC9E4LY06 (Creating Multimodal Texts) and AC9E4LY07 (Presenting Information).
• Play-Based & Experiential Learning: Foster genuine understanding with interactive and creative activities that make media concepts memorable and impactful. Imagine your students hunting for the 5 Ws and H, engaging in 'Headline Rewrite Challenges', learning to spot bias and using 'Framing Viewfinders' to understand photography.
• Built-in Assessment & Differentiation: Effortlessly monitor student progress through natural observation opportunities embedded in each activity. Every lesson includes clear support and extension tasks to cater to all learners in your classroom.
• Early Career Connections: Expose students to potential future pathways by weaving career education into every lesson. Connect activities to the work of a Journalist, Reporter, Editor, Fact-Checker, Media Analyst, Web Designer or Photojournalist.
• Summative Assessment Task: Conclude the unit with a comprehensive "The Official Press Pass Application" task, complete with a student-friendly rubric for marking.

Cover Your Entire Year of English!

This is Unit 1 of a comprehensive 4-unit bundle. Together, these four units cover all mandatory content descriptors of the Year 4 English Curriculum, providing you with a full year's worth of engaging, high-quality English lessons. Stop the endless search for resources and reclaim your time.

Download "Unit 1: Digital Detectives & News Hounds" today and ignite a passion for critical thinking and effective communication in your classroom!