English Department Report 

Welcome back to another exciting year here at Woodmans Hill Secondary College. We have introduced a number of new texts in our year levels, including Slaughterhouse-Five, some of Ursula K Le Guin's work, Concerning the Greek Tyrant, Of Mice and Men and Animal Farm at Year 10, alongside truncated versions of The Ant and the Grasshopper, The Butterflies, and How the Birds Got their Colours in Year 7,  The Tell-Tale Heart, The Red Tree, and Tomorrow When the War Began at Year 8, and Dracula, The War of the Worlds, and Coraline at Year 9. 

Many of these texts have been used in support of our current units between 7-10, which are all based on Creative Writing.  

Our VCE Year 11s have been working on a Personal Connections unit, featuring the text 1984.  

The Year 11 Language students have taken on their new subject, exploring the building blocks of the language that we share, including word classes, sentence structures, and more. 

Our VCE VM students have been completing a series of different writing tasks, some of which will feature in the next newsletter. 

Finally, the Year 12 students in mainstream English have been studying the film High Ground, and the Language students have been discussing the ways in which a text can utilise informality and formality. 

NAPLAN - Year 7 & 9 

The NAPLAN assessments will take place from Wednesday 11th – Monday 23rd March 2026 for students in Years 7 and 9. 

NAPLAN assesses student progress in: 

• Reading 

• Writing 

• Conventions of Language (spelling, grammar and punctuation) 

• Numeracy 

   

In the coming weeks, teachers will ensure students are familiar with the online format and comfortable with the types of questions they may encounter. NAPLAN is just one snapshot of student progress, and we encourage students to simply try their best and approach the assessments with confidence. 

Further information, including timetables, can be found on compass. 

If you don't want your child participating in NAPLAN it is important that an official withdrawal form is filled out and handed to the front office – this needs to be done before NAPLAN starts.