Contains all the activities I use when teaching ‘Mabo’. These include: mindmaps to aid in theme analysis close analysis of key scenes and film techniques practice essay questions practice sentence-building exit slips summary and analysis of the key themes of ‘Mabo’ which are accompanied by many screenshots from the film for ease of understanding :)

Do your students have difficulty structuring topic sentences? Mine did too! This task scaffolds students to practice writing relevant topic sentences. It starts off ‘easy’ with getting students to circle the appropriate topic sentences for given essay questions - and gradually builds in complexity in getting them to write their own using earlier examples.

The following group mindmap task allows students to brainstorm and present events pertaining to the theme of racism in the film, ‘Mabo’. This task was incredibly useful in getting students to independently and collaboratively start thinking of the theme (and reduces a lot of teacher-talk time!). Specific instructions are on the document and I’ve also included a handy answer key at the bottom of the document so you don’t have to scramble through the film for answers :) I later then use this task to scaffold and assist students in planning an essay to the following prompt: ‘Mabo’ highlights how the entirety of Australia is discriminatory against Indigenous Australians. Discuss.

The following task is introduces students to the legal lingo in the film ‘Mabo’ and to add a fun element to legal lingo that often just ‘goes over’ students’ minds when they watch the film. As students watch the film, they shade the terms that they hear. To achieve Blackout Bingo, they need to shade all the terms. They will then work in pairs to find the definitions of the terms in their Bingo sheet.