First day

• Discuss the stigma attached to being regarded as 'boat people' in Australia. Lily's teacher states that all Australians were 'boat people' at some time. Talk about the status of refugees who try to come to Australia illegally by boat. Are they treated well or not? Why?
• Australia is viewed by many overseas people as the 'lucky country' and many immigrants come here to find work and a better standard of living for their families.
• Ask students to research groups that make up Australia's multicultural diversity and use a timeline to plot when they arrived. They should list 8–10 ethnic groups and their immigration milestones in Australia since 1788. The timeline can be presented electronically or as a poster. The following websites are helpful resources for students to use:

1. Museum Victoria, 'Origins', http://museumvictoria.com.au/origins
2. SBS, http://www.sbs.com.au
3. National Archives of Australia, http://www.naa.gov.au
4. ASA Group, http://www.australia-migration.com
5. Migration Heritage Centre, http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au
6. Australian Human Rights Commission, http://www.humanrights.gov.au/racial_discrimination/face_facts/index.html
7. Wikipedia, 'Immigration history of Australia', http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_history_of_Australia
8. Australian Government, Department of Immigration and Citizenship, 'Fact Sheet 4 –More than 60 years of Post-war Migration', http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/04fifty.htm

• Phoung describes the terror of travelling to Australia as a 'boat person'. She tells a story about being attacked by pirates and pretending to be on a fisherman's boat. Ask the class to find other personal recounts of being attacked by pirates. They can use these accounts as the basis of a front-page newspaper report on the incident. The report should have a heading, body text, accompanying illustrations, maps or images, and picture titles.

Student Activity Sheet H3.7: Australian immigration timeline

• On Student Activity Sheet H3.8 you will find an excerpt from the Australian Government's Department of Immigration and Citizenship, 'Fact Sheet 75 – Processing Unlawful Boat Arrivals', found at http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets
• Ask students to gather current information on boat arrivals and refugees seeking resident status in Australia.

• Divide students within the class into six groups. Each group should select one of Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats and construct a response to the topic below:
  
  How does the Australian Government respond to illegal 'boat people' and official refugees? How popular is this policy in the Australian community? Include information on whether Australia has ever closed its borders to refugees and why.

• Students could use the de Bono Thinking Hats to respond to the topic as follows:

1. Questions (white)
   Use only the information available. What are the facts?
2. Emotions (red)
   Provide a gut reaction or statements of emotional feeling (but not any justification).
3. Bad points judgement (black)
   Apply logic to identifying flaws or barriers; seek mismatch.
4. Good points (yellow)
   Apply logic to identify benefits; seek harmony.
5. Creativity (green)
   Provide statements of provocation and investigation. See where a thought goes.
6. Thinking (blue)
   Think about thinking.

• Each group responds with a series of points supporting their Thinking Hat answer and then shares their views with the class.

Student Activity Sheet H3.8: Group activity: Thinking Hats

• Ask the class to consider what it means to be Australian. Ask students to nominate characteristics about Australians that are different and recognisable by people overseas. List these characteristics on a fact sheet. One of these aspects should be language.
• View the whole episode again and listen for Australian slang terms used by the characters in everyday speech. List these on the fact sheet.

• Ask students to form small groups and give them a section of the alphabet, for example, A–E, F–J, K–P, Q–T, U–Z. Students should find Australian slang terms that start with letters from their alphabet group. They should find as many words and phrases and their meanings as they can. Once the groups have at least five each, collate them in a class dictionary, which can be added to for each episode. Students can illustrate some words to create deeper meaning.

Student Activity Sheet H3.9: Create a class dictionary

• Show students the picture book, The Arrival, by Shaun Tan (2006). What can they learn from the book about the experiences of someone migrating to a new country? How might the book relate to Phoung's experiences in the clips?

• Ask students to design their own picture book made up of three panels. The story should be based on the title The Arrival. It should portray a newly arrived immigrant to Australia and the first three things they will see, or want to see. Students should be reminded to develop a short text and then position their images to maximise their visual impact. They should consider how the audience will look at and read the images. Make sure they use three different angles of perspective to frame each part of the story.

Student Activity Sheet E3.7: An arrival story

• Lily's neighbour Mrs Benson remarks, 'You know there are laws against turning your house into a refugee camp.' As a class, discuss this comment and what it means. Ask students why they think Mrs Benson made this statement. What might she be afraid of? Introduce the term 'prejudice' and discuss its meaning with the class.
• Ask students to consider and respond to the following question: What is a refugee camp?
• Explain to the class that there are still many refugees in immigration detention centres in different parts of Australia waiting to be processed.

• Ask students to find a variety of newspaper articles regarding recent Australian reports about asylum seekers, legal and illegal refugees, and detention centres. Students should read a selection of these articles and list them and their references including date and place of publication. The students are to nominate if they feel the article is for or against asylum seekers coming to Australia. As a group, they are to present a brief report to the class, describing one event that made national headlines in Australia about refugees.

Student Activity Sheet E3.8: The law and refugees

• Phoung briefly describes her journey on a boat to her new classmates. The horrific tales of the boat being captured by pirates and the terrifying account of having to be quiet is recounted for the captive audience in the classroom.
• Ask students to recall and discuss what Phoung said in her story and how the audience reacted to the events being recounted.

• Ask students to find out more about modern-day pirates and whether events like those Phoung described still happen today. As a tuning-in activity, read excerpts from the following books:

1. Ziba Came on a Boat by Liz Lofthouse and Robert Ingpen (2007)
2. Refugees: We Left Because We Had To by Jill Rutter (2004)
3. Girl Overboard by Justina Chen Headley (2009)
4. The Island by Armin Greder (2007).

• These stories will give students a better sense of the experiences of boat arrivals to Australia. Ask students to write a summary of their findings on the perils faced by boat people fleeing their homeland. They could produce book reviews of the books listed above or others that they find on the topic.

Student Activity Sheet E3.9: Peril at sea

• Create a list of words that best describe the emotions and feelings of the boat people in Phoung's story. Encourage students to use descriptive adjectives.

• In small groups, students use a thesaurus to add to the list of words. When they have completed their lists, they can share them with the class.
• As a class, discuss this list of words and explain how words can convey levels of feeling to the reader or listener. Some words are more emotionally powerful than others and will have a stronger impact on the reader or listener, such as the difference between 'concerned' and 'terrified'. Discuss this with students and look at how 'concerned' has a lower emotional impact than 'terrified'. Look at the list of words and identify some other examples of high and low emotional impact.
• Copy and distribute the combined list of words to the class and have students sort them into levels, from low emotional impact words through to the highest emotional impact.
• For further background activities see L6184 'Super stories: The Abandoned House: nouns and adjectives' and L3456 'Online news: Perfect Pets'.
• Explain how writers make careful choices to decide how they want their words to impact on the reader. As a modelled writing activity, demonstrate this using the same sentence structure, beginning with a bland, low emotional impact version and then ramping up the emotion to try to make it as terrifying as possible. For example:

1. The ugly, old pirates carefully boarded the little fishing boat and the refugees were worried.
2. The armed, brutal pirates aggressively boarded the violently rocking boat and the refugees were terrified.
3. The choice of action verbs is also important here in building drama.
4. Using this process as a guide, ask students to write a short, imaginative story describing the attack on Phoung's boat by the pirates, and how the passengers managed to trick them and escape safely. The goal is to create maximum emotional impact on the reader through the careful choice of words.

Student Activity Sheet E3.10: Making an impact

• As a class, watch the opening scene of Episode 3: 1988: Lily, and then have students write down three or four words to describe the sort of person Lily appears to be. Some examples might be that she is competitive, likes to be a winner, and needs to be in charge of things. Then ask students to watch the arrival of Phoung and write three or four words that best describe her character.
• Discuss Lily's initial expectations and anticipation of the arrival of her cousin Phoung from Vietnam. Ask students to discuss why Lily is excited at the prospect of her cousin Phoung staying with her. After Phoung arrives, the story changes very quickly for Lily. Encourage students to think about what occurs between the two girls and why the situation changes. How does Lily view her cousin once she arrives?

• Ask students to write down the problems that occur between Lily and Phoung to ignite their rivalry. Students should take note of the problems using Student Activity Sheet E3.11 and write a corresponding solution for each problem the girls face. These problems and solutions can be shared amongst the class to help promote discussion on the topics of friendships and problem solving.

Student Activity Sheet E3.11: Everything changes