Celebrating a Year of English at Cecil

🎉📚 Celebrating a Year of English at Cecil

What a year it has been for the Secondary English faculty! As we close the final chapter of the school year, we are proud to celebrate a year filled with stories, voices, ideas, and outstanding student engagement.

Across classrooms and year groups, students read over 1,000 books, journeying through worlds imagined and real. From gripping novels to powerful nonfiction, these texts sparked curiosity, empathy, debate, and a genuine love of reading. Along the way, students explored countless poems and plays, unpacking language, meaning, and the universal human experiences that connect us all.

Classrooms buzzed with discussion, creativity, and insight as students analysed texts, performed scenes, crafted responses, and found confidence in expressing their ideas. From Shakespeare to contemporary voices, students rose to the challenge of complex texts and demonstrated impressive growth as readers, writers, and thinkers.

This year also marked an exciting new chapter for English with our move into the new r block. Teaching and learning came alive in brand-new classrooms, purpose-built to support collaboration, discussion, and creativity. These fresh spaces have energised lessons, supported dynamic learning experiences, and provided students with inspiring environments in which to read, write, perform, and think deeply.

We were thrilled to finish the year on a high with an incursion for our English Advanced. In our very own McGregor Centre students then experienced a live performance of The Merchant of Venice, performed by Come you Spirits. This brought their HSC studies vividly to life. Seeing this classic text performed and explained was a memorable and inspiring way to celebrate a year of hard work and literary exploration. The Extension group also enjoyed an excursion to the State Library. This allowed us to work on your research skills, look at the resources on offer, and immerse ourselves in the collection. We continued this with performances in year 7, of their own written and performed scripts.

The English faculty would like to commend our students for their enthusiasm, perseverance, and intellectual curiosity. Together, we have built a vibrant reading and learning culture—one that values stories, challenges ideas, and celebrates the power of language.

Here’s to a year well read, well written, and well remembered—and to the many stories still to come. 

Have a great break and we will see you in the new year.