Complete Blackfish Study Unit for BGE

This complete unit of work is built around the documentary Blackfish and has been designed for use in Scottish secondary English, Media and Literacy classrooms. The pack supports pupils in developing critical thinking, discussion skills and purposeful writing through a carefully structured sequence of learning.

The unit moves pupils from initial responses to SeaWorld and captivity, through analysis of protest, bias and perspective, and into a range of meaningful writing tasks that develop both empathy and critical judgement. The materials are particularly effective with mixed-ability classes, offering clear scaffolding without diluting challenge.

What’s included:

• Pre-viewing activities exploring persuasion, advertising and audience response
• Structured discussion and inference tasks based on protest imagery and documentary content
• Guided viewing questions to support understanding of key events and themes
• Creative and discursive writing tasks, including:
  – tweet-style opinion writing
  – protest poster planning
  – empathetic writing from Tilikum’s perspective
  – formal letter writing
  – newspaper reporting using the 5 W’s
• Clear learning intentions and success criteria throughout
• Editable templates and writing frames to support all learners

This unit works particularly well for:

• developing pupils’ ability to express opinions clearly
• teaching audience and purpose in writing
• supporting inference and evidence selection
• engaging reluctant learners through real-world issues

Written for Scottish secondary classrooms, the pack aligns with CfE experiences and outcomes and supports National 4 / National 5 literacy and English skills. While centred on Blackfish, the learning approach is transferable to other documentary and non-fiction texts.

Obsidian resources are built from real classroom practice and focus on what teachers actually need: coherent units, strong scaffolding and materials that work in real classrooms.