Five-Week Plan
A week-by-week sequence for reading the novel, analysing its gaps and contexts, and building a critical argument.
Open resource →
Year 11 ATAR Literature • Picnic at Hanging Rock Unit
Picnic at Hanging Rock
A five-week unit on Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel. Students examine how the novel turns a real landscape into a mystery, how the school's order collapses, and how narration, gender and colonial context shape the reader's experience of not knowing.
What this packet is. It contains 16 public resources, including this overview. The novel and the 1975 film are in copyright, so the packet does not reproduce their text or images. 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 withheld evidence produce uncertainty.
- Analyse the school, the Rock and the colonial setting as connected systems of meaning.
- Use critical perspectives to sharpen a reading, and acknowledge their limits.
- Respond creatively and orally, and explain the choices behind the response.
The five-week shape
| Week | Focus |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Context and first reading. Lindsay, 1967, the 1900 setting and the true-story frame; read the opening and the picnic sequence. |
| Week 2 | Structure, character and narration. The five movements; the school's power; withheld interiority and the documentary afterword. |
| Week 3 | Setting, gender and symbol. The sublime and the gothic; the school as an institution; timepieces, clothing, the tower and fire. |
| Week 4 | Evidence and critical writing. Close reading with short quotations; feminist, postcolonial and gothic perspectives; draft a critical paragraph. |
| Week 5 | Creative and oral response. Draft a missing scene, witness statement 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, setting, evidence and critical writing.
Open resource →Context and Composition
Lindsay, the 1967 novel, the 1900 setting, the film and the "true story" frame.
Open resource →Plot and Structure
The five movements of the novel, from picnic to aftermath, and how the structure produces uncertainty.
Open resource →Characters and Power
Appleyard, Miranda, Irma, Sara, the staff and the visitors, and the social order they inhabit.
Open resource →Narration and Uncertainty
The frame, the gaps, the documentary afterword and how the novel makes uncertainty meaningful.
Open resource →Setting and the Sublime
Hanging Rock as real place, colonial symbol and gothic landscape, and the idea of the sublime.
Open resource →Gender and Institution
The boarding school as a machine for producing respectability, and the gender order the disappearance exposes.
Open resource →Symbols and Motifs
Timepieces, clothing, the tower, fire and the Rock as recurring details that invite symbolic reading.
Open resource →Close Reading and Evidence
A method for reading a passage closely, using short quotations and structural evidence without reproducing the text.
Open resource →Critical and Creative Response
Critical perspectives, comparative writing, creative options and a spoken annotation studio.
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, motif grid, quotation log, retrieval questions 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 film, 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 film. 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.