Secondary -  English Faculty

English

The English Faculty has been working hard to provide students with a variety of activities both within and outside the classroom. We are aiming to rewrite some of units that we will be delivering in the classroom in 2022. We we will be asking students to give us feedback on topics that they found engaging and areas for improvement and development. 

As we are now well into Term 3, most students have received their assessment task for this term. If any students require additional support, don’t hesitate to contact myself or your child's teacher.

Here is a small sample of some of the activities the students have been involved in:

Junior Debating - Premier’s Challenge Competition.

Last week saw the conclusion of the Premier’s Challenge Debating Competition for our Year 8 Debaters, after three challenging rounds against schools in the Central West. The first round saw Molong Central win convincingly against Orange High School, however, we were unfortunate in our rounds against Bathurst and Kelso High Schools.

Our debaters took the time to reflect at the end of the season and realised how important teamwork and time management are when it comes to preparing for a debate. Students are only given one hour to prepare their debate and are allowed to access a dictionary for support. They are required to speak for 6 minutes on the given topic - something our team unanimously decided was very tough indeed!

2021 was a great introduction to debating for our Year 8 team and they promise they will be back bigger and better next year!

Debating team members: Abigail Oliver, Madelyn Jones, Emma Wilson, Joshua Hargrave and Eleanor Collins.

Year 9 Debating

The Year 9 Debating Team recently participated in 3 different debates with other high schools from across the region. They competed against two Bathurst Schools and a high school from Grenfell. The team worked together to come up with some fantastic arguments for topics such as "All sports involving animals should be banned'' and 'Welfare payments should be made to cards and can only be used for necessities'. 

Due to COVID, the teams couldn't meet up in person and had to perform their debates via Zoom. This was all very new for the team but a great experience to show what can be achieved these days with the updated technologies that we have access to. Unfortunately, they didn't come away with the win, but the students really enjoyed coming up with their speeches and the ideas they shared were fantastic.

Year 8 English- Picture Books

During Term 2, all of Year 8 conducted an in-depth study on 'Picture Books'. To start the term off many of them thought that picture books were for Primary school kids, but by exploring our wonderful Library and English department, that opinion quickly changed. By investigating multiple picture books, the students started to realise that picture books are in fact, for all ages. They also discovered that the picture books which were aimed for young teenagers and young adults had some inspirational messages in them. After discovering this, it was time for our brilliant authors and illustrators to put what they had learnt to the test. Their task was to come up with an original idea, which conveyed an important message and create a picture book for a Year 6 audience. These messages needed to be inspirational and teach an important life lesson.  Below are two of our year 8 students with their beautiful and inspiring creations.

Author/ Illustrator: Madlyn JonesTitle: One Person

Author/ Illustrator: Jake GavinTitle: The Fisherman