English
Katrina Young
It has been a busy start to the year in the English Domain, as we have welcomed students back after two interrupted years. Teachers have been focused on establishing routines and consistency to ensure a safe learning environment with high expectations for students. Across many year levels, our units have focused on writing, giving students the opportunity to engage with and improve a skill that was difficult to achieve at home.
Our teachers have also been fostering active discussion and critical thinking as students have engaged with a range of issues and texts. From Year 9 students exploring resilience in a range of autobiographies, to Year 7s unpacking illusions and reality in Coraline, to Year 11's engaging with complex issues of race, gender, and personal agency in The Thing Around Your Neck. These texts provide opportunities for active discussion as students express and respond to others’ ideas and perceptions of the world.
As we head towards the Term 1 school holidays, we encourage students to keep reading a wide range of texts for enjoyment. This can be highly beneficial to both their reading and writing skills, as well as their ability to think critically.
Please enjoy reading some samples of student work from this term.
Year 10 brainstorming tasks
These were based on brainstorms for a Text Response to the series Robbie Hood. Students passed their sheets on to other groups to share a range of ideas.
Year 10 Essay Sample
Students wrote an essay on Dylan River’s Australian series Robbie Hood. Here is a paragraph excerpt of a high performing essay.
River criticises those who use their authority to create or enforce unjust rules. By portraying Mervin as racist and bigoted through the juxtaposition of his reluctance to let Indigenous children into the pool and his painstaking counting of their entry money, and his easy waving through of white families, River highlights the impact of racism and bias against disadvantaged people. This is further compounded by his refusal to allow entry to a child who is “ten cents short”, and his raising of the entrance fee when a First Nations child is next in line. While Mervin does not suffer any legal consequences for his bigotry, River uses the Indigenous children’s return to the waterhole as comeuppance, a slow motion shot highlighting the number of children – and paying customers – who no longer need to use the pool to cool down. River uses these consequences to emphasise the wrong in enforcing biased rules. River’s message is further when Robbie, Blue and Johnny go into foster care and stay at Eileen’s house because Nan’s house is “overcrowded.” The foster care system enforces this rule that ultimately causes Robbie and Blue to fight, and negatively affects the protagonists emotionally. Blue’s actor uses defensive body language to suggest the negative impact foster care has on her and Eileen’s idea to buy lice treatment embarrasses Robbie in front of Mim. Furthermore, Robbie describes moving to Eileen’s house as going into foster care “again” implying multiple previous failures of the system. River uses this to suggest that authority figures, whether individuals or organisation, do not always have fair or beneficial rules, and questions those who enforce rules that are unjust.
Beth Foley, 10Z
Year 9 Autobiographies
Students read a range of excerpts of others’ autobiographies and then created their own. Click on the links below then open link in new tab to read two high level responses.
Year 9 Poem
This student produced a poem titled ‘I am a Writer’.
I found a brown box
With a golden locket
I hid it sneakily
In my blue coat pocket
In the deep, dark Indian Ocean
I'd like to see more sea creatures
Like turtles as well as dolphins
So we can relax on the beaches
In my toolbox
I'd magic up more art and craft
To have more supplies for painting
So we can watch the children laugh
I wish that every boy and girl
Can fall asleep with happy dreams
And when they drift off to sleep
They’ll be like a shiny golden moonbeam
Georgia Gavriel, 9G