English Faculty

General Announcements

💻 We are a BYOD school. Please bring charged devices to class to access your learning. 

Assessment task support: During weeks 9 and 10, English teachers will be supervising A9 during recess and lunch breaks to provide support for students working on their English assessment tasks. All students from 7-12 are welcome to attend!

Year 12 trial HSC examinations are underway in weeks 5 and 6. Selected students in English Studies following an ATAR pathway, English Standard, and English Advanced students will be completing examinations that assess their learning of English content over the last twelve months. All English staff wish these students well in their exams! 

These year 12 students are also diligently working towards studying and preparing for their HSC examinations in October. English Standard and Advanced students will complete two separate examinations for English and selected students in English Studies will complete one examination. 

Pro tip! Consider using these top 5 study strategies when preparing for examinations!

1. Manage your time effectively

2. Use successful note-taking strategies

3. Use mnemonic devices to remember information

4. Review regularly (remember the learning curve!)

5. Complete practise tests under timed conditions

Extracurricular Activities

Debating: The Stage 4 Debate team have demonstrated incredible teamwork as they have come up against local schools. After an unfortunately ill-timed fire drill that disrupted our first debate against Rutherford Technology High School, our team showed incredible resilience as they came up against a very competitive Wallsend Callaghan College. Miss Love was very proud of the courage and confidence that our team displayed in the marginally close debate, where a devastating loss of team captain Arliah Kinloch and the integral Amy Crocker forced in new members at the last minute. Despite this, the incredible team consisting of Sarah Graham, Chloe Velich, Mackenzie Taylor, Olivia Waugh and chairperson Keira Sharrock put on an impressive display of rhetoric and teamwork. The team has been working hard on their rebuttals to prepare for the upcoming debate against Maitland Grossman High School. Well done debaters! 

Theatre Excursion: Year 11 English Advanced excursion to see 1984 in Sydney. They will be studying this text in Term 4 for Texts and Human Experiences. Students were impressed with the dystopian theatre design and confronted by the intensity of the thought police and the Big Brother regime!

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Teaching and Learning 

Year 7 English: Year 7 have been engaging with all things science fiction this term! They have learnt about dystopian and utopian worlds (sometimes even designing their own), archetypes, and are engaging with a range of short sci-fi texts. They will explore film techniques and consider how these might create meaning within a text. They are moving towards being able to identify film techniques in unseen texts and explaining the effect of these techniques in their Term 3 assessment task. 

7K designed this dystopian world located at Francis Greenway High School!

7 Assessment Task 2: 

Student samples of assessment task 2- Imaginative Writing!

Student sample 1

Student sample 2

Great work year 7! We loved reading your imaginative responses! 

Year 8 English: Year 8 classes are exploring ‘Why Shakespeare?’ this term! They are considering why he might still be taught in schools today and what these texts might offer or prompt in audiences. Classes will read excerpts from his famous plays (Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Taming of the Shrew, and Macbeth- just to name a few!) and view scenes from the film adaptations. Select classes will participate in practical synopsis exercises to explore Shakespeare’s texts! For their assessment task, students are working towards writing an original discursive text focused on Shakespeare and his relevance in schools!

8P have written some incredible paragraphs in response to one of the questions below: 

1. Shakespeare is just early reality TV- full of fights, love drama, and chaos. 

2. Should we still bother with Shakespeare in school?

3. What would Shakespeare think if he time-travelled to our school today?

4. Shakespeare would have gone viral on TikTok. 

8P engaged in a practical moved synopsis of Shakespeare's play Macbeth with Ms Coleman. This moved synopsis is an exercise borne by the Bell Shakespeare theatre company in Sydney and engaged the students in a dramatic re-enactment of key moments of dialogue from the play! 

Year 9 English: Students are diving into the world of Gothic Horror this term! They’re exploring what makes this genre so gripping by studying its key features across film, poetry, and prose. Through a mix of different texts, students are learning how narrative structure, film techniques, and literary devices can create mood and meaning. They’re also developing their creative writing skills, experimenting with figurative language and sensory imagery. Students are working towards writing an imaginative writing task where students will craft their own Gothic-inspired character and setting.

Year 10 English: This term students have been engaging with the concept of powerful voices and what these might look like through time, what issues might be explored in texts, and what makes somebody worthy of having a voice. They have been demonstrating their understanding of this unit through composing their own discursive writing texts! They have read a range of texts that explore hilarious family anecdotes, world-changing historical concerns, and have even engaged with Eminen’s ‘Without Me’ song lyrics! Students are working towards writing an original piece of discursive writing in which they explore an issue they are passionate about. They will then reflect on their purposeful use of language in a reflective response.