Literacy Week Reflection

In Term 3, Staughton College held its annual Literacy Week. The week consisted of exciting and engaging activities which included a spelling-bee, writing competitions, bookmark and badge marking, an Author-mon hunt, literacy trivia and our infamous staff vs student debate. Literacy Week is a great opportunity for us as a school to celebrate everything reading, writing and speaking.

Staff vs. Student Debate -

This year, the students were yet again the reigning champions of the staff vs student debate. The student team, made up of Kaley Roe, Tasman Broadway and Serg Grigorovitch, argued the affirmative side for the topic ‘English should be a compulsory subject for all students.’ The negative teacher’s team was made up of Paul Kelly, Joe Kelly and Sheree Ottone. It was a challenging and thought provoking debate, well done to everyone for researching, preparing and delivering some excellent ideas.

Spelling Bee -

We had a great crowd and participation for the Spelling Bee. Students competed in year level groups and winners were able to spell challenging words suitable to their year level.

Spelling Bee Winners:
1st Place - Lance DelaCruz
2nd Place - Komal Singh
3rd Place - Emma Stanford

Literacy Trivia -

This year our Student Leaders developed and ran a literacy trivia session for students. The trivia questions were on texts read in class and classic pieces of literature.

Tivia Winner Groups:
1st Place (tied): Danny, Bella, Liam, Chaenelle, Harlee, Sienna
1st Place (tied): Place: Rick, Elijah, William R,, William H, Lilly, Shannon, Kaden, Val
2rd Place: Ryley, Victoria, Jessica, Tamara

Writing Competitions -

Over the course of the week, multiple writing competitions were held in Junior English classes and tutorial classes.

For the Junior English classes, students submitted entries for multiple Writing Competitions for different writing types. For persuasive writing, students wrote a TEEL paragraph that answered the following question: What book would you make required reading for everyone on the planet and why? How do you think this would change the world? For the cross curricular writing, students used a technique of drawing pictures with maths formulas to retell a story. For poetry writing, students wrote a 10 line poem that summed up the entire story of their favourite book and for creative writing, students wrote a creative piece based on a visual image from a particular genre.

For the Tutorial writing competition, students were provided with a prompt and the start of the story and the race was on to see who could finish writing the most intriguing story. The winning classes for the writing competition were 7C, 8A and 9H

Persuasive Writing Winner: Blessing Vaoga
Cross-Curricular Writing Winner: Cherry Yeung
Poetry Writing Winner: Tasman Broadway
Creative Writing Winner: Lance Dela Cruz

For more photos and updates about all things literacy at Staughton follow our Instagram account @staughtonreads

Please see below for the winning entry for our creative writing competition from Lance Dela Cruz.

Creative Writing Mega Challenge Competition

Never Forget

by Lance Ethan Dela Cruz, 8H

As I opened the door, I started creeping through the long, narrow, oddly silent hallway, so silent that you could hear a pin drop from the other side. I kept making my way through until I heard a loud noise coming from behind. I turned my head. I could've sworn I heard someone, but no one was there. Suddenly, I sensed someone standing behind me. My heart sank as I turned back and saw the suspect with a gun in his hand pointed toward my chest.

“Stay right there, Detective,” whispered the suspect menacingly.

At that moment, it felt like the end of me.

It was just a normal Monday morning in San Francisco. I was just about to enter the police precinct when I was stopped by Captain Grayson. “Morning, Captain!” I greeted him.

“Good morning, Detective Starks,” he replied. “I need to see you in my office right now. It’s an urgent matter.”

I never really got along with the Captain. He would always criticise me for being late or not doing my job right.

“He can’t be serious. It’s seven in the morning and he’s calling me to his office, this early!” I mumbled as I put my stuff down on my desk to see Detective Steele already working on his paperwork.

I promptly greeted Detective Steele while I made my way to the Captain’s office.

I entered the room to see Captain Grayson sitting on his desk, fidgeting with his pen. He only does this when he is super nervous.

“Starks, take a seat,” he said “Do you want to know why I’ve called you here?”

“It’s because of the ‘Vending Machine Incident’, isn’t it?” I said semi-jokingly. “I can explain, I was at my desk wh–”

“NO!” yelled the Captain “I have no time to deal with this nonsense, not when there is a sociopathic serial killer on the loose! This serial killer has gotten away with the murder of over 30 people, some of them being police officers. We thought he had stopped over ten years ago but has recently resurfaced. Honestly, I was gonna give you this case, but now that I’ve heard–”

“I’ll do it!” I said without a thought.

“Fine, you can have the case,” he said rather reluctantly “But, if you manage to screw up even one tiny detail of the case, so help me–”

Knowing this was the opportunity of a lifetime, I politely replied, “You can count on me, sir.”

Walking out the door, I took a glance at Detective Steele. I knew I needed a great partner for the job, someone brave, someone selfless, and someone who could give me a good laugh from time to time. I walked up to Steele and asked him to be my partner on the case. He agreed before I even got into detail about the case as he dropped all his paperwork and followed me to the crime scene.

As we arrived at the crime scene, which happened to be a pizza parlour, we could see yellow tape all over the entrance, barricading it. We showed the police officer on duty our detective badges who promptly let us in. As I looked around, there were gunshot holes all over and an unloaded gun that was lying on the floor which we took in for evidence. Detective Steele got some more information from some of the police officers as I saw the coroners take the body out of the scene.

“Okay, so we’ve got a witness who claims to have seen a hooded man running out of the building during the time of the murder,” said Detective Steele.

“Great!” I exclaimed. “She must’ve seen the suspect’s face or something. Let’s take her in for a witness statement.”

Detective Steele and I called the witness and got some identification of the suspect. The witness said that the suspect was caucasian and was wearing a grey hoodie with black gloves. We also got a police sketch from the witness and from there we could identify the suspect, a man named Alec Graves. Alec worked at the pharmacy nearby, making him our main suspect

Alec was taken in for interrogation, which I would say went pretty well.

“YOU KNOW YOU DID IT, JUST CONFESS ALREADY!” I said emphatically.

“No, I didn’t. I told you, I was at work when this all happened,” said the suspect convincingly.

“LIAR!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

Detective Steele had to hold me back for this one. Unlike me, Steele interrogated the suspect calmly, going on for about a half hour. He then came back to share the details with me.

“The suspect has a pretty darn good alibi,” said Steele disappointingly “He looks innocent, I’m starting to think we got a false statement.”

I sighed, “You know what, we’ll just pick this all back up in the morning. Let the suspect free. Just go home and get some rest, Steele.”

I got home as the clock struck midnight. I crashed onto my couch, feeling frustrated, thinking I had just fumbled this case and quite possibly my career. I just laid there, thinking about the case. I tried to fall asleep, but it kept lingering in my mind. So, I took my phone for a closer look at the autopsy report.

“Wait a minute. The victim overdosed on anti-depressants, he wasn’t shot,” I said to myself. “The gunshot wounds were there on his body, this doesn’t make sense. Unless…”

It hit me. We assumed that the suspect was shot and killed, but it turns out the gunshot wounds were there to cover up the real murder weapon, the anti-depressants. The only way someone could’ve obtained the medication was by getting it from a pharmacy, just like the one Graves worked at.

The next day, I got to the precinct early, despite getting only four hours of sleep. I continued working on the case until Steele came walking through the door. As soon as I saw him, I walked over and told him about the breakthrough in the case.

“That’s amazing, Starks!” Steele exclaimed. “We’ve gotta go and catch Graves right now.”

“Just got a report saying Graves was spotted at an abandoned apartment building on Main Street,” I said while looking at my phone. “Come on, we’ve gotta hurry if we wanna catch him!”

We drove to the abandoned building where Graves was sighted. The building looked old and gloomy. It almost looked like one of those houses that criminals hide in—that’s because it is. We entered the building and there were tons of floors so, we decided to split up. I took the top half and Steele took the bottom half and we would meet on the fifth floor. I made my way quietly through floors ten to six, but couldn’t find Graves. I went down the stairs to the fifth floor.

“Stay right there, Detective,” whispered the suspect menacingly.

At that moment, it felt like the end of me.

With a gun pointed at my chest, I stayed calm and tried to talk with Graves.

“Come on, Graves,” I told him. “Is this really how you wanna live your life? Known as a murderer?”

“SHUT UP, or I’m gonna shoot!” shouted Graves.

Not even a second after Graves’ words came out of his mouth, Detective Steele came bursting through the door.

“Put the gun down, Graves!” said the detective while pointing his gun at him.

Graves put his gun down on the floor, right next to him. He then put his hands behind his back as I grabbed my handcuffs to arrest him. Thinking I had just made the biggest arrest in the city of San Francisco, Graves quickly took his gun and shot Detective Steele right in the head. Frustrated and shocked, I knocked Graves down to the ground and immediately cuffed him.

“STEELE, STEELE!” I cried as I ran over to my dear friend. “You’re gonna be okay, you’re gonna be just fine.”

Tears ran down my eyes as all I could think about were all the times I’d spent with Detective Steele.

With the remaining breaths he had, Steele whispered to me, “Never forget me, Starks. We aren’t just friends, we’re brothers.” he lay there, lifeless.

Sorrowfully, I screamed, “NOOOOOO!” as I bawled my eyes out.

A few minutes after I called, the paramedics and backup arrived at the building. The police officers apprehended Graves who was brought in. The paramedics took Detective Steele to a hospital bed and put him in the ambulance as all I could do was watch and see my beloved friend go.

A couple of days go by and I am dressed to go to Detective Steele’s funeral. I struggled to hold back my tears as I saw Steele’s face in the casket. At the funeral, I was granted the honour to give a eulogy to my friend one last time.

“This was truly a tragic day for the SFPD as we say goodbye to a great leader, detective and friend–Detective Henry Steele. We’ll all miss you, bud.” I ended my speech, still trying to hold my tears back.

I meant every single word of it.

After the service, Captain Grayson approached me while I was standing by Steele’s grave.

“I know how you feel,” he said. “My best friend was killed when I was in high school and I’ve always thought I was responsible for it. Ever since that, I’ve repeatedly been hard on myself. Kinda like the way I was being hard on you. I never hated you nor resented you, Starks. I just wanted to help you and your career and be a mentor to you.” He paused for a while then continued, “If you think about it, Detective Steele didn’t die for nothing. He died protecting the city that he loved. You’re a good detective Starks, and an even greater friend.”

“Thank you, sir. That means a lot coming from you,” I said as I stood there.

The Captain walked away, leaving me alone in front of my best friend’s grave. I took a moment to reflect on the things Steele used to do and the moments we shared.

Tears started gushing out of my eyes as I said, “Rest in peace, my friend. I’ll never forget you.”

THE END