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Wearable text

Yellow T-shirt with a large Superwoman icon on the front
Superwoman T-shirt, in the National Museum's collection

Explore the use of text on clothing in this lesson plan for teachers of Year 9 English. The lesson provides whole class and group activities for students to examine how text and symbols are used to convey a message, using images of three different T-shirts as stimulus. Students are asked to consider the audience, message, 'brand' and design of the T-shirts, then use this knowledge to design a T-shirt promoting a local issue of their choice.

Key learning objectives

  • Analyse and interpret the visual text on three T-shirts held in the collection of the National Museum of Australia.
  • Identify that text can be multi-layered and complex and that the use of symbols and icons augment the meaning of print in multimodal texts.
  • Apply knowledge of how to use messages and symbols in order to produce and convey ideas and information to an audience by designing a T-shirt.

Educational value

  • Provides a lesson for teaching about persuasive text and symbolism, using images of T-shirts as stimulus.
  • Encourages students to analyse the audience, message and effectiveness of text on T-shirts, as used to promote an issue.
  • Engages students in creative design tasks using multimedia tools.
  • Provides images of three T-shirts from the collection held in the National Museum of Australia.

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