Help students move beyond surface-level understanding and explore how authors use figurative language to communicate deeper meaning.

The Garden is a Year 7–8 Five-Day Text Exploration resource designed around the pack focus Figurative Language and the week focus Extended Metaphor. Through the story of a school garden transformed over time, students investigate how the author uses the garden as a metaphor for personal growth, perseverance, responsibility, and community.

Across five short lessons, students progress from vocabulary and word choice to analysing author craft, making inferences, exploring themes, and constructing evidence-based PEEL responses.

 

This pack includes:

• Original mentor text
• Five days of structured learning
• Explicit WALTs and success criteria
• Vocabulary and figurative language investigations
• Extended metaphor analysis
  
• Inference and interpretation tasks
• Theme and author's purpose exploration
• Evidence-based response scaffold
• Student self-reflection pages
• Comprehensive teacher guide with answers and alternative interpretations

Perfect for:

• Whole-class reading
• Guided reading follow-up
• Literacy rotations
• Independent literacy tasks
• Figurative language instruction
• Explicit comprehension teaching

Students will learn how authors combine symbolism and extended metaphor to communicate deeper ideas, encouraging readers to look beyond the literal meaning of a text and explore how images, settings, and objects can represent hope, guidance, belonging, and perseverance.

By the end of the week, students will be able to identify symbolic elements and imagery, explain what they may represent, and discuss how these author choices contribute to meaning, theme, and purpose.

Curriculum Focus: Figurative Language, Reading Comprehension, Author Craft, Inference, Themes, Symbolism, Evidence-Based Responses
Year Level: Years 7-8
Lesson Length: 15–20 minutes per lesson
Pack Focus: Figurative Language
Week Focus: Extended Metaphor
Theme: Growth

Scope and Sequence: Pack A, Week 4

Key Learning: Students explore how authors use symbolism and extended metaphor to communicate ideas that cannot always be expressed directly, discovering how ordinary objects, powerful images, and contrasting settings can represent hope, resilience, guidance, belonging, and the enduring human capacity to find a way forward, even in difficult times.