English News
By Cameron Smith - Faculty Coordinator: English
Semester One Snapshot
Semester One has been a whirlwind of energy, focus and growth within our English classrooms at Loreto College. Below is a glimpse of the varied learning experiences that have taken place over the last six months…
Our Year 7s, as the newest Loreto learners, commenced the year by writing their own autobiographies, gaining a sense of authorial voice, and experimenting with the craft of non-fiction writing. This provided a chance for staff to get to know their students extremely well as they begin their time at the College. Students then later applied their writing skills to analysing fiction and the class text, a historical fiction novel, Rabbit, Soldier, Angel, Thief, that tells the story of Sasha, a six-year-old Russian boy who survives alone in war-torn Russia during World War II.
At the other end of the school, Senior English students have been equally engaged as they work through the demands of the VCE English, English Language and Literature Curricula. In English Units 1 and 3, students were presented with an array of opportunities to craft their own compelling texts in response to particular writing frameworks, and shaping their texts for particular audiences, contexts and purposes. Literature students have read widely and engaged with classic novels like The Great Gatsby and The Age of Innocence, and crafted their own texts from gothic fiction, comparative analyses of primary texts and their film adaptations (the book is always better!) and developed their interpretations and literary vocabularies. Meanwhile, English Language students have closely examined the dynamic nature of language in society, investigating how babies and children acquire spoken language and analysed the language used in public contexts, in particular the blurring of informal and formal language in modern rhetoric.
Back in the Junior School, Year 8 students read a variety of speeches to inform their own speech writing and development of ideas as they explored issues that are important in the lives of young people. They also responded creatively to Sally Morgan’s verse novel Sister Heart, transforming poetry into prose.
Year 9 students studied the Shakespearean play Romeo and Juliet. Part of their studies included analysing the text across various forms including a graphic novel, a live performance and film. Students were tasked with writing letters to the central protagonists offering advice to the 'star-crossed lovers' as well as developing their analytical essay writing abilities. They later analysed how campaigns, media texts and activist voices employ language and multimodal strategies to influence audiences. Students designed their own persuasive campaign in response to a genuine injustice where they furthered their critical media literacy and civic awareness in confronting the world we live in.
Year 10 English students engaged with a variety of texts, including Kirli Saunders’ poetry collection Kindred and a variety of media texts in response to the debate about whether more suburban streets have a 30 kilometre per hour speed limit. Students in Foundation English engaged with a series of short stories and media texts, debated the role of school uniforms in 2026 and later developed their own resumes and cover letters suitable for workplace contexts.