Text Overview

 

Hating Alison Ashley is an iconic Australian novel written by Robin Klein in 1984 and adapted into a play by Richard Tulloch in 1987. The novel has been nominated for many literature awards and is used in many schools for year 6 to 8 students.

 

The story follows Erica Yurken a year 6 student at fictional Baringa East High as she deals with issues of teen angst, namely her crazy family and jealousy of her classmate Alison Ashley who embodies perfection. Erica tells stories in the hope of making herself appear more interesting and glamorous. There are a number of interesting characters within the play with overt personalities which are easy for middle schoolers to analyse and understand.

 

Klein explores themes such as embarrassment and low self-esteem, fear and envy, the value of friendship and family and ultimately reminds the reader that acceptance of ourselves and others is the most important thing, especially as we grow up. She shows us through Erica and Alison that it is okay to be a little ‘different’ and no one is perfect and without their own share of problems and insecurities. For this reason, it is a great text for the classroom and something that many students can relate to.

 

References:

Evely, C. (n.d.). Hating Alison Ashley Study Guide, retrieved from http://actf.com.au/assets/the_learning_centre/actf_haa_study_guide.pdf

Hall, S. (2005). Hating Alison Ashley, The Sydney Morning Herald, retrieved from http://www.smh.com.au/news/Reviews/Hating-Alison-Ashley/2005/03/17/1110913718671.html

Wikipedia page Hating Alison Ashley, viewed on 4/2/2016, retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hating_Alison_Ashley_(novel)

 

 

Unit Overview

 

These resources could be adapted by teachers for other topics or work on this text but the unit overview for my own year 7 class is provided for teacher reference.

 

Curriculum Areas: English

Year Level: Year 7

Duration: 5 weeks

 

Description/Rationale

 

This unit is based on characters and the way an author creates characters within a text with meaning. Students will learn how to identify aspects of a character including their personality, attitude, their image, the type of language that they use etc and will learn to consider why the author might have created such a character. i.e. they can relate characters to themes, they will begin early understanding of characterisation as a technqiue.

 

Assessment

 

At the end of the unit students will be required to write an individual 300-word essay describing a character of their choice.

 

Example Lesson Plan: a full lesson plan for an introduction to the topic can be downloaded below as an example of how to plan the below tasks into a lesson. 

 

 

 

 

The below tasks could be used as ways to incorporate ICT into any of the lessons.

 

Lesson Task: Students to choose a monologue type passage from the play version of the text and then use the voice recording app on an iPad to record a dramatic reading of the passage, focusing on displaying voice qualities that they feel the character might use based on what they have learnt from reading the text in class. Then save the audio file for the teacher to listen to.

 

Lesson Task: Students to use youtube to search for a video from one scene of the play (either recorded from a play production or from the Australian movie) and discuss with a partner why they did or didn't imagine the character to act or look the way the actor depicted. 

 

Lesson Task: Ask students to imagine that they are a character from the text who is writing on Erica's blog or social media page. Their task is to leave a 50 word comment for Erica praising her on the writing of the camp play. Students should leave the comment on a class blog type site and focus on using the same type of lanugage and words that they know the character uses. 

 

Lesson Task: Students should use Microsoft Publisher to design a poster that describes a character of their choice from the text. Instruct them to use a search engine such as Google to find relevant images, symbols and photos. 

 

Lesson Task: Use the smartboard to project a Venn Diagram or comparing characters. As a class brainstorm ways that Erica and Alison are the same and different. Allow a student to be the scribe writing in the diagram so the whole class can see.