If you’re looking for a chapter book that can engage upper primary students while meaningfully bringing First Nations perspectives into classroom learning, Wylah the Koorie Warrior offers plenty of possibilities.
Blending adventure, fantasy, Australian megafauna, Aboriginal language and Culture, the series gives teachers opportunities to explore literacy, history, science, geography and visual arts through a story students can really get caught up in.
Meet Wylah
Wylah the Koorie Warrior is an Australian middle-grade adventure series co-created by Peek Whurrong man Jordan Gould and writer and illustrator Richard Pritchard.
The first book, Guardians, introduces Wylah - a brave, clever and strong-willed young girl whose world includes giant megafauna, dragons and powerful Guardians.
When her people are taken captive by the Dragon Army, Wylah must find the courage to unite the five Guardians and begin the journey towards becoming the Koorie Warrior.
The story is inspired by First Nations history and grounded in Culture, with Peek Whurrong language and cultural knowledge woven throughout the story. Importantly, the creators explain that Wylah represents Peek Whurrong Culture and is not intended to represent the cultures, languages or traditions of all Aboriginal peoples across Australia.
This distinction creates an important classroom conversation in itself: there is no single Aboriginal culture, language or experience.
At Riley Callie Resources, you can find Wylah the Koorie Warrior Book 1: Guardians, along with other books in the series.
Why use Wylah in the classroom?
One of the strengths of Wylah is the number of different learning areas teachers can explore through one engaging text.
The publisher's teaching notes recommend the first book for ages 8–14 and identify links with English, HASS (History), Science, Visual Arts and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures cross-curriculum priority.
Here are some ways you could extend the story across your primary classroom.
1. Explore Aboriginal language
Peek Whurrong language appears throughout Wylah, providing an opportunity to talk about Australia's rich diversity of Aboriginal languages.
Students might keep a vocabulary journal as they read, recording Peek Whurrong words they encounter, their meanings and how they are used within the story.
This can then lead into a broader discussion about the language of the Country where your school is located.
You might also like to explore together:
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Who are the Traditional Custodians of the Country where our school is located?
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What language or languages are connected with this Country?
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Where can we find reliable information about local language?
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Who has authority to share and teach this language?
The official Wylah website also provides a Character Design and Language Workshop and a collection of Peek Whurrong naming words that teachers can explore.
Explore the official Wylah resources
2. Investigate Australian megafauna
This is one of my favourite ways to extend Wylah beyond an English lesson.
Wylah's world is filled with giant megafauna, opening up some fantastic Science and HASS learning opportunities.
Students could choose an Australian megafauna species and investigate:
What did it look like?
Where did it live?
What did it eat?
How large was it?
When did it live?
What evidence do we have that it existed?
They could then create a fact file, poster, information report or their own illustrated megafauna character.
The Melbourne Writers Festival's Wylah teacher resource specifically suggests researching Australian megafauna and creating an illustration, alongside activities across English, Visual Arts, Geography and History.
3. Use Wylah as a novel study
For Years 4–6 in particular, Guardians could form the basis of an extended novel study.
Rather than simply asking students to recall what happened, use each section to encourage deeper thinking.
Try questions such as:
What does being a warrior mean to Wylah?
How does Wylah change as the story progresses?
When does Wylah demonstrate courage even when she is afraid?
What role do family and community play in Wylah's decisions?
How does Country influence the story?
What can we learn about a character through their relationships with others?
Students could also create character profiles, story maps, diary entries from Wylah's perspective, alternative scenes or predictions about what will happen next.
Scholastic has produced particularly useful teaching notes for Guardians, including chapter-by-chapter comprehension questions and classroom activities.
Download the free Scholastic Teaching Notes for Guardians
4. Explore Country and place
Country is much more than simply the physical setting of a story.
While reading Wylah, teachers can encourage students to think about the relationship between people, animals, landscape, knowledge and place.
You might then bring the conversation back to your own school.
Ask students:
Whose Country is our school on?
What do we know about this Country?
What waterways, plants and animals are significant in our local environment?
Where has the information we are using come from?
This is also an opportunity to discuss the difference between a Welcome to Country and an Acknowledgement of Country, something included as a suggested classroom investigation in the Melbourne Writers Festival teaching resource.
5. Create a Wylah-inspired character
After examining how characters, animals and megafauna are developed in the series, invite students to design their own fictional character.
Students might consider:
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Where does the character live?
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What animal or megafauna species accompanies them?
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What strengths does the character have?
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What challenge do they face?
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What is important to them?
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How will their character change during their story?
The official Wylah website provides downloadable character images for classroom and library education resources, as well as character-design activities.
This can become a fantastic combination of creative writing and Visual Arts.
Go beyond a one-off First Nations lesson
Perhaps most importantly, Wylah doesn't need to become the classroom's "Aboriginal lesson".
Use it as you would any rich classroom text - across literacy, comprehension, creative writing, Science, HASS and the Arts.
That helps First Nations perspectives become part of everyday classroom learning rather than something explored only during NAIDOC Week or other significant dates.
It is also important to remember that the Culture and language represented in Wylah are connected to particular people and Country. The official Wylah website itself encourages readers to learn about their own local Aboriginal community and speak with local Elders about the Culture of their area.
Free Wylah teaching resources
You don't have to develop an entire unit from scratch. There are some excellent resources already available:
Scholastic – Guardians Teaching Notes
Includes chapter-by-chapter comprehension questions and activities.
Download the teaching notes
Publisher Teachers' Tips – Guardians
Includes curriculum connections, discussion prompts and learning activities across English, HASS, Science and Visual Arts.
Download the Teachers' Tips
Official Wylah Classroom Resources
Includes downloadable character resources designed for use by classrooms and libraries.
Explore Wylah resources
Melbourne Writers Festival Teacher Resource
Includes activities exploring teamwork, book covers, Traditional Owners, Welcome to Country and Acknowledgement of Country, and Australian megafauna.
Download the teacher resource
There are also Scholastic teaching notes available for later books in the series, including Protectors, with further before-reading and classroom study activities.
Bring Wylah into your classroom
A great classroom book doesn't just give children a story to read. It gives them somewhere to begin asking questions.
Wylah the Koorie Warrior can open conversations about courage, family, Country, language, identity, Australian megafauna and the diversity of Aboriginal cultures — while still delivering the adventure, fantasy and humour that keeps young readers turning the pages.
Explore the Wylah the Koorie Warrior series at Riley Callie Resources:
👉 Wylah the Koorie Warrior Book 1: Guardians
Explore Megafauna and First Nations Connections
One of the most exciting learning opportunities that comes from reading Wylah the Koorie Warrior is exploring the incredible megafauna that once lived across Australia.
But this learning doesn't have to sit only within Science.
Aboriginal peoples lived alongside Australian megafauna for thousands of years, so this is also an opportunity to explore how scientific, archaeological and First Nations knowledge can contribute to our understanding of Australia's ancient past.
Here are some excellent resources teachers can use to extend this learning.
ABC Education – Australia's Extinct Megafauna
This is a fantastic starting point for primary classrooms.
ABC Education has developed a six-part animated series exploring Australian megafauna including Diprotodon, Thylacoleo, Procoptodon, Genyornis, Megalania and Palorchestes.
Even better for teachers, the accompanying classroom resources are designed for Years 3–7 and include curriculum connections, critical-thinking questions, research projects and activities across Science, English, Mathematics, HASS and the Arts.
👉 Explore ABC Education's Megafauna Series
Classroom idea: Ask students to select one of the megafauna featured in Wylah or the ABC series and create a research profile covering its size, diet, habitat, adaptations and closest living relatives.
ABC Education – First Nations People and Megafauna
This short ABC Education video is particularly valuable when using Wylah because it encourages students to consider different forms of evidence and knowledge when investigating Australia's past.
It explores evidence relating to First Nations peoples and megafauna, including rock-shelter paintings, and asks students to consider why First Nations knowledge is important to our understanding of Australia's ancient history.
The resource also provides discussion questions for students.
👉 Watch First Nations People and Megafauna – ABC Education
Discussion question: If we want to understand what Australia was like thousands of years ago, what different sources of knowledge and evidence could we look at?
This can lead into discussions about oral histories, cultural knowledge, rock art, archaeology, fossils and scientific research.
National Museum of Australia – Lake Mungo Teacher Resources
The National Museum of Australia's Lake Mungo teacher resources provide another useful way to connect ancient Australian environments, megafauna and Aboriginal history.
Suggested student activities include investigating theories about megafauna extinction, examining archaeological evidence and exploring the significance of Lake Mungo to Indigenous peoples and scientists.
👉 Explore the Lake Mungo Teacher Resources
Classroom idea: Create a large classroom timeline showing First Nations peoples, Australian megafauna and environmental changes. This can help children understand that Aboriginal history extends back tens of thousands of years, rather than beginning with European colonisation.
Queensland Museum – Meet the Megafauna
Queensland Museum has some excellent free digital resources that allow students to explore extinct megafauna discovered in northern Australia.
Students can investigate animals including a six-metre-long giant lizard, a 2.5-tonne wombat-like herbivore and the marsupial 'lion'. The museum also provides access to digital learning experiences, 3D fossils and megafauna reconstructions.
👉 Explore Queensland Museum's Megafauna Resources
Their I DIG Discovery Student Challenge is particularly useful for Years 3–6 and can be extended into a larger Science inquiry.
Australian Museum – Megafauna
The Australian Museum's megafauna collection is a great student-friendly research source for investigating individual species.
Students can explore animals such as Diprotodon, Australia's giant wombat-like marsupial, as well as other extinct Australian animals and learn about fossils, palaeontology, ancient environments and theories surrounding extinction.
👉 Explore Australian Megafauna – Australian Museum
Classroom idea: Divide students into small groups and assign each group a different megafauna species. Have them become the class "experts" before presenting their findings to everyone else.
FREE Classroom Game – Go Extinct! Megafauna
For something a little more hands-on, Flinders University provides Go Extinct! Megafauna as a free printable classroom game.
The game supports Biological Sciences learning and introduces students to Indigenous names associated with megafauna while highlighting the long history of First Nations peoples alongside these animals. A teacher resource, educational booklet and colouring sheets are also available.
👉 Download Go Extinct! Megafauna
This would be a great activity to use alongside your Wylah novel study.
Bring it back to Wylah
After exploring these resources, ask students to return to Wylah and look at the story with fresh eyes.
Which megafauna can you identify?
Which were real animals and which elements belong to the fantasy world of the story?
What do we know about these animals from fossils and archaeology?
What knowledge might Aboriginal peoples hold about Australia's ancient animals and environments?
How do scientists, archaeologists and First Nations knowledge holders contribute different forms of knowledge about the past?
These questions help turn Wylah from a fantastic class novel into the starting point for a much broader inquiry into Country, First Nations histories, Australia's ancient environments and Science.
Importantly, remind students that Aboriginal cultures and knowledge are diverse and connected to particular Countries and communities. When exploring local knowledge, language or cultural stories, look to appropriate local Aboriginal community sources and knowledge holders rather than assuming knowledge from one Country applies everywhere.