Year Seven News

English

In English this term, students have been exploring the common storytelling devices across their favourite films and novels. The Monomyth, or the concept of a Hero's Journey, is evident as far back as the stories of Ancient Greece, such as that of Achilles and the Battle of Troy (which our students are studying in Humanities). 

Students have looked at Harry Potter, Maze Runner, Cinderella and some of our all time favourite superheroes (Spider-Man!) and identified how each of the main characters in these stories, take the same 12 step journey towards becoming or reaffirming  their role as a hero. 

Students are now hard at work drafting their own narrative, in which they have created a hero and mapped out their journey. Students will work on this for the remainder of the term, receiving continuous feedback from their teachers during one-on-one conferencing. 

The English team is amazed with the engagement level from the students and are incredibly excited to read the finished copies of, what seems to be, some very interesting stories.

Music

With the completion of our first Unit of Inquiry where we explored the influence of music on society over the four major Periods of Music (Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern/Contemporary), our Year Seven students have now shifted their focus on establishing a working knowledge of the foundations of music.  

Over the coming weeks, our students will explore musical notation, their names and beat value.  They will also learn how to identify the  pitch of the note as it is written on the musical stave, and explore creating chords in alignment to the Circle of Fifths.

This week, the focus was on creating complex rhythmic patterns, and through the use of mnemonic rhythmic triggers, they documented and challenge each other to reproduce the rhythmic pattern through claps.  By the end of the lesson, our students were able to combine the various patterns and performed them in groups for each other.