Dying To Live - Using Rhetoric to Change Minds

Australian curriculum content descriptions: 

Year 7 English:

• Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts, selecting aspects of subject matter and particular language, visual, and audio features to convey information and ideas (ACELY1725) 
• Edit for meaning by removing repetition, refining ideas, reordering sentences and adding or substituting words for impact (ACELY1726)

Year 8 English:

• Create imaginative, informative and persuasive texts that raise issues, report events and advance opinions, using deliberate language and textual choices, and including digital elements as appropriate (ACELY1736) 
• Experiment with text structures and language features to refine and clarify ideas to improve the effectiveness of students’ own texts (ACELY1810)

Syllabus outcomes: EN4-4B, EN4-2A, ENLS-5A, ENLS-7A, ENLS-9A

General capabilities: Literacy, Ethical understanding

Relevant parts of Year 7 achievement standards: Students understand how the selection of a variety of language features can influence an audience. They understand how to draw on personal knowledge, textual analysis and other sources to express or challenge a point of view. They create texts showing how language features and images from other texts can be combined for effect. Students create structured and coherent texts for a range of purposes and audiences.

Relevant parts of Year 8 achievement standards: Students understand how the selection of language features can be used for particular purposes and effects. They explain the effectiveness of language choices they make to influence the audience. Through combining ideas, images and language features from other texts, students show how ideas can be expressed in new ways. Students create texts for different purposes, selecting language to influence audience response.

Unit of work: Dying to Live – English – Years 7–10

Time required: 90+ mins

Level of teacher scaffolding: Medium – facilitate class discussion and social action planning

• Student Worksheets – one copy per student
• Device capable of presenting a video to the class
• Agree/Disagree signs and Blu-Tack
• Rhetorical Devices Factsheet
• Project Planning Tool

• Communication
• Critical thinking
• Empathy
• Ethical understanding

Dying To Live is a documentary feature film that examines organ and tissue donation and transplantation in Australia through seven different stories that highlight the social, physical and emotional effects of being on the organ donor waiting list. The film also aims to dispel myths about organ and tissue donation while encouraging family conversations so that family members are aware of their loved ones’ donation intentions. Find out how to screen or view the film here.