What if, Peter Adams asks in this important and original book, as English teachers, instead of always requiring our students to respond discursively to the literary texts that they encounter in our classrooms — by asking them to analyse, compare, describe, evaluate, explain or to defend a set position with a series of arguments — we were to offer them opportunities to sustain and deepen their engagement with those texts, both intellectual and emotional, by writing about them in creative–imaginative ways? What if, in Robert Witkin’s resonant phrase, we were to ask them “to make an artistic response to the artistic work of others”?

The result is evident in the remarkable pieces of writing which form the heart of this book, pieces of writing which not only show young writers working “at the far reach of their capacities” but which represent a deeply thoughtful, sustained and personal exploration of the significance of the work in question.

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Publication Date: 28-08-2013

Investigating Aesop’s Fables is an engaging, stimulating and challenging resource for junior secondary students which will help teachers implement the Australian Curriculum: English in an integrated and thoughtful way.



In the course of this unit of work, students investigate what makes a fable a fable, the relationship between Aesop’s fables and the society in which they were produced and circulated, and the ways in which one particular fable, ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper’, has been told and retold over the years, by writers and visual artists as various as Jean de La Fontaine, Gustave Doré, Walt Disney, Somerset Maugham and John Ciardi. A diverse range of other texts is included, from a World War 1 propaganda poster to a political blog.



Assessment tasks have been constructed to provide clear evidence of students’ achievement of the relevant Standard.

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Publication Date: 20-08-2014