Performance cars

English

The Australian curriculum: English

The Australian Curriculum: English aims to ensure that students:

learn to listen to, read, view, speak, write, create and reflect on increasingly complex and sophisticated spoken, written and multimodal texts across a growing range of contexts with accuracy, fluency and purpose
appreciate, enjoy and use the English language in all its variations and develop a sense of its richness and power to evoke feelings, convey information, form ideas, facilitate interaction with others, entertain, persuade and argue
understand how Standard Australian English works in its spoken and written forms and in combination with non-linguistic forms of communication to create meaning
develop interest and skills in inquiring into the aesthetic aspects of texts, and develop an informed appreciation of literature.

This resource contains extracts from the Australian Curriculum and is current as at 25 May 2011. © Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority 2010.
ACARA neither endorses nor verifies the accuracy of the information provided and accepts no responsibility for incomplete or inaccurate information. You can find the unaltered and most up to date version of this material at http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/Home
This material is reproduced with the permission of ACARA.

English activities [2]

Activity 1: Cars

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Subtheme(s): Language and scripting; Transport

The muscle cars of the 1960s and 1970s were flamboyant racing machines that attracted a large number of enthusiasts.

Discover

In Episode 4, the young character Mike is very interested in cars 'with muscle'.
Ask students to define what cars could be classed as muscle cars. Ask them to listen to the cars named in the first clip and compile a class list .For example MG; Kingswood; and 1971 Ford XB 351-GT may be included in the list. What does it all mean? To a car enthusiast, it all makes sense.
As a class, discuss the information given in the clip as well as what students understand from the dialogue about the cars. Ask students to write their own definition of muscle cars and share this with the class.

Reflect

Ask students to investigate one of the muscle cars of the 1960s and 1970s, then write a persuasive editorial piece (with words and images) that includes the following elements:

Why would they like to own this car?
What are the main features of the car?
What makes this car special?

Students can present their editorial electronically using a publishing program, or on a small poster to share with the class.

Download

Student Activity Sheet E4.1: Cars with muscle

Activity 2: 'Rev head'

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Subtheme(s): Language and scripting; Transport

Discover

Ask students to create a mini-dictionary of muscle car terms from the list. The mini-dictionary must include pictures and meanings relating to the term, or word. If possible develop this information into a website, and upload it to the school server.
Start a blog to communicate with other students who may also be interested in muscle cars.

Reflect

Conduct a class survey of the things students collect and present these findings as a pictorial representation such as a bar graph, or with text and images. Evaluate and assess the most popular collections and describe the reasons given by students for collecting these items.
As an extension activity, students can survey members of their family (parents, grandparents and siblings) to find out what they collected when they were young. Encourage students to collate this information on a graph, electronic spreadsheet, or record it manually on paper.
The survey results can be presented to the class, showing the differences and similarities in collections over the years. As a class, discuss the variety of objects collected over different generations and highlight the differences in objects collected today compared with in the past.
Encourage students to bring examples of collections to the classroom to share and compare.