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English News
The English Department hosted two ATAR skills workshops in the lead-up to the Semester One Examinations, inviting Claire Jones from the English Teachers Association of Western Australia, to deliver consecutive workshops to each of our Year 12 classes.
Our Year 12 ATAR English Team, Dr Jenkins and Mrs Evans, were delighted with the outcome of the workshop. They specifically requested Claire for this event and had spent time prior to the workshop helping her to tailor this workshop to meet the needs of this year’s cohort.
Having received reports from each of our examiners, we can certainly see that this additional support has reinforced the sage guidance that our students had already received from their classroom teachers. Indeed, this workshop was so successful that we are now exploring the prospect of providing similar options for our Year 12 ATAR English Literature students in Semester Two.
Revise Online
It was notable, in the week before the Semester One Examination, that there was a significant increase in students familiarising themselves with the Revise Online subscription provided for them by the English Department at the start of the year.
Revise Online provides students with opportunities to attempt examination questions and to receive direct and targeted feedback for the responses they compose. Regardless of whether students have performed well or not in their Semester One exams, we strongly advise that they make a practice of adding this additional support to their overall preparation process.
Students who derive the best from Revise familiarise themselves with the platform a long way out from their final exams by using it frequently. This is a good case of not working harder but simply working a little smarter.
Coming up: Curtin Conference
In Week 10, the final week of the term, our Year 11 and Year 12 ATAR English and English Literature students will attend this year’s ATAR English and English Literature Conference at Curtin University, engaging in a complete day of subject -specific workshops.
This year is the first time that our Year 11 ATAR English and English Literature students have been able to attend. Indeed, they are doing so because we made a specific request to the organisers, arguing that earlier attendance would allow our students longer to consolidate the skills and understandings that they drew from the day. All our students will receive a complete run sheet for this excursion in Week 8, but pencil in Wednesday 24 June for Year 12, and Thursday 25 June for Year 11.
WADL Debating
In Round Four of the WA Debating League season, our Novice team were introduced to the challenge of impromptu debating and, in the process, discovered how quickly an hour can fly by when you are trying to bring a case together. In particular, the team learned a valuable lesson about teamwork, realising how much valuable time can be lost when a team fails to work in harmony. I have said it more than once that I often feel that we learn more about ourselves through debating than we learn about debating itself.
We were unsuccessful against Carmel School, losing a debate that we probably should have won, because we devoted more time to debating with each other than debating against our opponents. Our topic was that teachers should be responsible for the social and emotional needs of students. We were the affirmative.
Edison famously once quipped, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” It is a great truth that all our great success stories feature people who have gained from failure because they refused to be defined by it.
Our second impromptu debate against Perth Modern School will test whether this team can learn from a setback. I am confident that they have.
Mr Damien Kerrigan
HOLA English and Languages