English Faculty
"People who do not read have no advantage over those who cannot read." - Mark Twain
Francis Greenway High School
The English faculty have delivered the first teaching and learning programs as part of the Curriculum Reform. We are now in the process of collating student survey data to use in conjunction with teacher evaluations of the teaching units and Term 1 assessment data. This will allow us to tweak our programs to be responsive to our students' needs and abilities.
There is so much happening in English in Term 2! The most exciting event for the faculty is the Romeo and Juliet excursion to compliment the Year 10 study of the transformation of William Shakespeare's play to the Baz Luhrmann film. All Year 10 students attended an engaging performance of the most famous love story. We love teaching this unit and student reports from last year's excursion indicate that students gained a deeper appreciation and understanding of the play. This excursion was a great opportunity for students as so many have never seen a live drama performance. Our next excursion is to the Sydney Jewish Museum to compliment novel studies that include subject matter related to the Holocaust.
Last term saw some outstanding assessment task results from so many students. Some noteworthy mentions include:
Claira Raymond (Year 12) and her beautiful imaginative response, and outstanding persuasive essays written by Madison Caple, Maya Oddy and Zakariyah Baitieh (Year 9) on the nature of war represented in war poetry. In Year 10, Alison Silva, Charles Lewis, Connor Taylor, Sam and Jack Eastwood and Lucy Dunn created highly engaging analytical, multimodal presentations to demonstrate their deep understanding of how the journey trope was represented in Lord of the Flies. Kaitlan Smith (Year 11) composed an exceptional imaginative response for English Extension 1. Ethan Kowalski and Jaiden Cooper constructed high quality evaluative letters of recommendation in their study of the world of work and achieved As, which is just fantastic. Aaliyah Masters in Year 8 composed an extremely engaging discursive response and in Year 7, Arlia Kinlock, Olivia Lancaster, Hallie Percival and Tommy Cox created an outstanding book review of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone for their first ever English assessment task in high school.
The English faculty focus on the explicit teaching of reading comprehension and writing continues. Year 7, 8, 9 and 10 students are taught literacy lessons every fortnight. This learning is extremely important more so now than ever as shown in this quote: "Adolescents entering the adult world in the 21st century will read and write more than at any other time in human history. They will need advanced levels of literacy to perform their jobs, run their households, act as citizens, and conduct their personal lives". Vacca et al. (2011).
Danielle Walsh
English Head Teacher