Year 9 English – Term 3 (WA Curriculum): Media, Representation and Digital Literacy

What this unit covers

In Term 3, Year 9 English in the WA Curriculum centres on the unit “Media, Representation and Digital Literacy”.

Students explore how language represents people and events across contexts, analyse spelling variations for effect, and create digital texts for specific purposes and audiences.

Lesson sequence (30 lessons)

The unit breaks down into the following lesson-by-lesson sequence — each title below is a teachable lesson, in order:

1. Exploring conventional spelling patterns and rules in formal texts
2. Identifying neologisms in contemporary media and technology
3. Analysing the spelling and impact of words like 'selfie' and 'Brexit'
4. Investigating how authors use non-standard spelling to show character voice
5. Examining dropped letters and phonetic spelling in dialogue
6. Creating character voices through strategic spelling choices
7. Understanding how context shapes representation in media
8. Comparing news reports about the same event from different sources
9. Analysing how public figures are represented across various media types
10. Examining language features that create positive and negative representations
11. Investigating representation of groups in historical advertisements
12. Comparing modern and vintage advertising language and imagery
13. Analysing how social media represents events differently than traditional news
14. Exploring bias and perspective in biographical writing
15. Identifying techniques used to influence audience opinion through representation
16. Introduction to digital text creation tools and their features
17. Planning an advertising campaign for a specific target audience
18. Designing print advertisements using digital design principles
19. Creating audio elements for advertising campaigns
20. Developing visual components for multimedia advertisements
21. Combining audio and visual elements in digital advertising
22. Understanding interactive storytelling techniques
23. Planning a short interactive graphic novel or digital picture book
24. Creating characters and storylines for interactive digital texts
25. Incorporating written text effectively in digital storytelling
26. Adding audio narration and sound effects to digital stories
27. Designing visual elements and illustrations for interactive texts
28. Testing and refining interactive features in digital texts
29. Presenting completed advertising campaigns to target audiences
30. Evaluating the effectiveness of digital texts and audience engagement

Curriculum codes in this unit

Content codes:

Reading the codes: WA codes (the ones starting with WA) pack the year level, learning area, strand and content number into one string, while the national Australian Curriculum v9 uses a different anatomy that starts with AC9 — same content family, different labels. Our complete WA Curriculum guide decodes both, character by character.

Planning notes for Term 3

WA terms run roughly 9–11 weeks, and in 2026 Term 3 runs from Monday 20 July to Friday 25 September — 10 weeks for WA public schools. With 30 lessons in this unit, that leaves breathing room for assessment, moderation and the weeks that disappear to carnivals, camps and public holidays — plan the assessable work to land two to three weeks before the end of term rather than in the final week.