Twelve no-prep analytical writing lessons for Years 7 to 9 that you teach from one screen: a projector, TV or interactive whiteboard. Students learn PEEL and TEEL paragraphs, embedding quotations, naming techniques and explaining their effects, and analysing written texts, images and film, then write a full analytical essay on a real text. A Lesson Guide page for every lesson means it also suits a relief day.
Runs in a browser. Nothing to install, no account, and it works offline. Students write in their books: no student devices, no logins.
WHICH EDITION DO I NEED?
- Teacher-Led Edition (this one): 12 lessons you run from one screen. Students write in their books. No student devices, no logins, no prep. A Lesson Guide and an optional student booklet are included.
- Student Game Edition: each student works on their own device, with six skill bays, the same real-text essay and a teacher console. Choose it if your class has laptops or tablets.
WHAT'S INCLUDED
- The lesson app: one HTML file with all 12 lessons, the artwork, music and sound effects built in
- Lesson Guide (PDF, 14 pages): one page per lesson with every step and its minutes, teacher notes, answers and curriculum links
- Cadet Logbook (PDF, 18 pages): an optional printable student booklet, one page per lesson, with the three texts printed in full
- A START HERE read-me
REAL TEXTS FOR THE ESSAY
Lessons 10 and 11 read one of three classic texts closely, on screen and in the Cadet Logbook:
- "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley (poem, 1818)
- The opening of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (novel, 1898)
- Robert Falcon Scott's last diary entry (Antarctica, 1912)
The class chooses a text, you draw a question for it, and the text stays on screen while students write. Studying your own class text? Skip the Choose and Read steps and the Thesis Lab and essay lessons work with it too.
HOW A LESSON RUNS
Most lessons follow the same rhythm, so students know what's coming:
- Today: learning intention and success criteria
- Story: a short story beat or a crew member's request
- Warm-up: a timed word game in books
- Learn: explicit teaching of one skill, with weak and strong examples and a quick check
- Model: think aloud through a strong example, and each press of the arrow reveals the next move, so the class can predict it first
- Together: you type the class's ideas on the live board, and in the skill bays the tool beside it responds as you type (a checklist that ticks, words that light up or a meter, depending on the bay)
- Your turn: students write against the timer, with sentence starters for support and stretch tasks for fast finishers
- Check: success criteria, an exit ticket and a share
Some lessons add a matching task, a decoding game, a Choose step or a Read step, and the planning and essay lessons at the end leave some steps out. Lessons run 39 to 56 minutes, and the Lesson Guide shows the time for each step and the total for each lesson. In the six skill bay lessons you choose Cadet, Officer or Commander level for the class.
THE 12 LESSONS
- Crash Landing: name the technique, point to it, explain its effect
- The Abandoned City: shot types and camera angles
- The Shoreline and the Signal: lead-in verbs and embedding a quotation
- The Structure Lab: PEEL, TEEL, STEEL and RACE paragraphs
- Quotation & Embedding Bay: embedding short quotations smoothly
- Technique Bay: naming a technique and explaining its effect
- The Analysis Depth Wheel: from literal to technique, effect and theme
- Cohesion & Linking Bay: revising for cohesion and the link to the thesis
- The Evidence Lab: analysing written texts, images, film and media
- The Thesis Lab: choose a text, read it closely, plan the background, thesis and roadmap
- The Verdict: Final Analysis: a full analytical essay that quotes the text
- Final Review: feedback, checking the evidence and revising with ARMS
The story runs across the whole unit. Your class are cadets whose ship has crash-landed, and the signal they decode turns out to be writing from Earth's own archive.
EASY TO RUN
- Keys: arrows or Space to move, T for the timer, R to reveal answers, H for a hint from Nova, F for full screen, M for music, ? for teacher notes
- Works with a presentation clicker
- Music is off when you start, and the sound effects have their own button
- Nothing about students is collected or saved. The browser remembers only the class's progress, on your own computer.
CURRICULUM
Australian Curriculum v9 English, Years 7, 8 and 9, and Common Core RL.1, RL.2, RL.4, RL.7, W.1 and W.2 for Years 7 to 10. The codes for each lesson are in the Lesson Guide.
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All four Teacher-Led Editions (narrative, persuasive, informative and analytical writing) come as a bundle in the Star Class Academy store. The Essay Writing Scaffold is a one-lesson essay planning tool, and the free Analytical Writing Worksheets cover PEEL paragraphs, quotations and thesis statements on paper. Star Class HQ is free too: a classroom hub with a behaviour tracker, name pickers and reward games, running in a browser.
Licensed for one teacher and their own classes.
Questions? starclassacademy.com/help?ref=sh or hello@starclassacademy.com
