Five-Week Plan
A week-by-week sequence for reading four public-domain Australian stories, building close reading, comparison and writing.
Open resource →
Year 11 ATAR Literature • Australian Short Stories Unit
Australian Short Stories
A five-week unit on four public-domain stories by Henry Lawson and Barbara Baynton. Students read the bush as a place of work, myth and danger, examine how voice and omission shape meaning, and build an argument about what these stories make visible and what they leave out.
What this packet is. It contains 16 public resources, including this overview. The four stories are public domain and are linked to Wikisource transcriptions rather than copied here. The packet contains no assessment instrument. Success criteria are formative and labelled as such.
Unit outcomes
- Read a short story closely, moving from first response to a defensible claim about how it works.
- Explain how narrative voice, focalisation, setting and endings shape meaning.
- Place the stories in their 1890s context without letting context replace analysis.
- Compare two stories around a shared question, and write an argument supported by precise evidence.
- Respond creatively and orally, and explain the choices behind the response.
The five-week shape
| Week | Focus |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Context and first readings. The 1890s, the bush myth and the Bulletin; read "The Drover's Wife" and "The Union Buries Its Dead". |
| Week 2 | Voice and close reading. Narrative voice, the yarn and the five-step close-reading method; read "The Loaded Dog". |
| Week 3 | Landscape, endings and ambiguity. Setting as work and threat; read "The Chosen Vessel"; analyse what endings refuse to resolve. |
| Week 4 | Comparison and writing. Pair stories around a shared question; draft a comparative paragraph and plan a longer argument. |
| Week 5 | Creative and oral response. Draft a missing scene, alternate ending or spoken annotation; take part in a seminar; revise and retrieve. |
Public resources
Outcomes and Skills
Formative outcomes and success criteria for close reading, voice, setting, comparison and writing.
Open resource →Stories and Authors
The four public-domain stories, their publication details, stable source links and a route into each one.
Open resource →Colonial Context
The 1890s, the bush myth, the Bulletin, gender and the silences that shape these stories.
Open resource →Close-Reading Method
A five-step method for turning a first response into a defensible claim, with a worked example from Lawson.
Open resource →Narrative Voice
First-person plural, third-person restraint, the yarn and the shifted perspective in the four stories.
Open resource →Landscape and Setting
The bush as workplace, threat and myth, and the houses, weather and distances that shape each story.
Open resource →Endings and Ambiguity
What each ending resolves, what it refuses to resolve, and how ambiguity does meaning-making work.
Open resource →Comparing Stories
Pairings, comparative thesis frames and a model paragraph for building an argument across two stories.
Open resource →Writing About Short Fiction
Argument, evidence, analysis and structure, with a model paragraph and common pitfalls.
Open resource →Creative and Oral Response
A studio for missing scenes, alternate endings and spoken annotation walks, with planning scaffolds.
Open resource →Seminar and Discussion
Prompts, roles and discussion moves for a whole-class seminar on the four stories.
Open resource →Revision and Retrieval
Story grids, a verified quotation bank, 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 public-domain status of the stories, source links and what is deliberately not published.
Open resource →Planning and support
Read the teacher notes for pacing, differentiation, sensitive content and formative feedback. The four stories are public domain and are linked from Stories and Authors. 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.