Five-Week Plan
A week-by-week sequence for reading the novel, analysing its world and ethics, and building a critical argument.
Open resource →
Year 11 ATAR Literature • Oryx and Crake Unit
Oryx and Crake
A five-week unit on Margaret Atwood's 2003 novel. Students examine how a future built from corporate power, genetic engineering and environmental damage is made to feel ordinary, and how memory, storytelling and ethical choice shape the reader's understanding.
What this packet is. It contains 16 public resources, including this overview. The novel is in copyright, so the packet does not reproduce its text. The packet contains no assessment instrument. Success criteria are formative and labelled as such.
Unit outcomes
- Read the novel closely, moving from first response to a defensible claim about how it works.
- Explain how structure, narration and memory shape the reader's understanding of the catastrophe.
- Analyse worldbuilding, naming and satire as forms of argument.
- Examine the novel's ethical questions about science, consent, corporate power and extinction.
- Respond creatively and orally, and explain the choices behind the response.
The five-week shape
| Week | Focus |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Context and first reading. Atwood, 2003, speculative fiction and the novel's real-world materials; read the opening and map Snowman's world. |
| Week 2 | Structure, character and narration. The present journey and remembered past; Jimmy, Crake, Oryx and the Crakers; memory and delayed revelation. |
| Week 3 | Worldbuilding, ethics and language. Compounds and Pleeblands; genetic engineering and consent; brand names, coinages and satire. |
| Week 4 | Evidence and critical writing. Close reading with short quotations; biopolitics, eco-criticism and genre; draft a critical paragraph. |
| Week 5 | Creative and oral response. Draft a missing perspective, creation myth or spoken annotation; take part in a seminar; revise and retrieve. |
Public resources
Outcomes and Skills
Formative outcomes and success criteria for structure, character, narration, worldbuilding, ethics and critical writing.
Open resource →Context and Composition
Atwood, the 2003 novel, speculative fiction, genomics, corporate power and the MaddAddam trilogy.
Open resource →Plot and Structure
The post-pandemic present, the remembered past and the delayed reveals that structure the novel.
Open resource →Characters and Power
Jimmy, Crake, Oryx, the Crakers and the corporate world, and the forms of power they embody.
Open resource →Narration and Memory
Limited perspective, self-mythology, delayed revelation and the unreliable record of Jimmy's memory.
Open resource →Worldbuilding and Satire
Compounds, Pleeblands, corporate brands, engineered animals and the real-world targets of the novel's satire.
Open resource →Science and Ethics
Genetic engineering, consent, extinction, corporate power and the ethics of creating the Crakers.
Open resource →Close Reading and Evidence
A method for reading a passage closely, using short quotations and structural evidence without reproducing the novel.
Open resource →Comparative and Critical Writing
Critical perspectives, comparative frames and a model paragraph for writing about the novel.
Open resource →Creative and Oral Response
A studio for missing perspectives, creation myths and spoken annotation walks, with planning scaffolds.
Open resource →Seminar and Discussion
Prompts, roles and discussion moves for a whole-class seminar on the novel.
Open resource →Revision and Retrieval
Timeline, character map, world map, concept grid, quotation log and a spaced revision plan.
Open resource →Teacher Notes
Pacing, differentiation, sensitive content, copyright and access guidance for the unit.
Open resource →Sources and Provenance
What the packet contains, the copyright status of the novel, and what is deliberately not published.
Open resource →Planning and support
Read the teacher notes for pacing, differentiation, sensitive content and formative feedback. The sources and provenance page records the copyright position for the novel and its context. Differentiation is built into the teacher notes rather than published as a separate student page. The sources and provenance page records what is public, what is linked rather than copied, and what the packet deliberately leaves out.
No assessment instrument. This packet does not publish confidential class briefs, scores, bands, weights, due dates or test papers. It is a teaching and formative-feedback resource. Teachers keep their own school instruments offline.
Last reviewed: October 2026. Counts on this page match the public HTML pages in this folder.