English

Junior School English

Scoresby Secondary College Symposium

Students in Year 8 English are currently working on their project for the Scoresby Secondary College Symposium. This unit of work provides students with the opportunity to voice their opinions, and have agency in influencing decision makers on areas that matter to them. 

The first step for all students was to consult the Knox Council Community Plan and identify key focus areas. Students were then tasked with addressing the following brief: “How can we ensure that our people and our environment are safe, supported and have every opportunity to thrive?” In small political parties, students developed a clear pitch that focused on improving Knox.

Below are some political parties and their suggested changes for Knox Council: 

The Green Campaign- To make electric car sockets more accessible to the Knox public.

Enviral Party- To reduce food waste and build more community gardens and compost bins in high schools across Knox.

The Environmentalist Party - To have all recreation areas and community buildings in the Knox area convert to renewable energy. 

Students will present their views at the symposium in the form of a political campaign, complete with slogans, speeches, posters and other persuasive mediums. 

We warmly invite all parents/ guardians to supports our students and attend the symposium which will take place on Tuesday 26 July from 12.00pm – 1.30pm. Please find attached the formal invitation with further details. 

Miss Emily Phibbs and Ms Kathleen Shirer

Year 8 English 

Senior School English

Our Year 11 students have been working very hard to develop their creative writing skills in response to ‘The Boat’ by Nam Le. 

Students explored a range of creative writing techniques to develop authentic voices of characters from the original text. Students were able to captivate audiences with their skills and demonstrated a deep understanding of the creative writing skills. 

For the remainder of the semester, students have been exploring how writer’s use persuasive language techniques to convince readers of their point of view. This unit will help prepare them for their own exploration of persuasive language in semester two. This has been a really exciting experience for me as I taught these students in 2018 when they began their high school journey with us.

I am so proud of how far they have all come and developed excellent writing skills in English. 

They have worked hard and taken on the challenges of VCE this year and I’m excited to see how they will perform next year for their final year of high school. 

Mr Sam Eddy

VCE English 

Quicksmart Literacy Success

During semester one, select students from Year 7 and Year 8 participated in the Quicksmart Literacy Program. 

Quicksmart is an intervention program run by the college that aims to improve student outcomes in literacy by focusing on the five key areas: accuracy, fluency, vocabulary, oral reading and general knowledge.

Students participated in 3 x 30 minute classes each week that enabled  them to hone their skills in these five key areas.

Congratulations to all students for their successful completion of the program!

All students displayed a dramatic improvement in their oral reading, fluency and reading accuracy. Students learned to explicitly adhere to the convections of punctuation and practised reading at an appropriate rate with clear diction. 

These results suggest the students benefitted greatly from the program.

Here is  what the students had to say about Quicksmart!

"I enjoyed the fun games and learning new words"

"A great program and helps people speak better and learn new words"

"Doing the flash card competition every lesson was the best"

Ms Kathryn Watt

Quicksmart Instructor