English News
Meeting Individual Needs: the Independent Reading Program
Our Independent Reading Program continues to provide students with opportunities to read widely and develop a range of skills. Students in Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 have a period each week devoted to independent reading and we encourage students to select texts that enable them to extend their interests and abilities. Students read at an instructional level, where there is an effective balance between the familiar and the unfamiliar. Teachers support the process in various ways, such as conducting reading conferences, keeping records of student choice and progress, and setting time for students to write structured reflections in their journals. These reflections focus on reading strategies such as questioning, making inferences, summarising, making connections and analysing author craft.
The Independent Reading Program allows us to meet the needs of all students and to promote what remains a key skill, for education and for life.
Dictionaries
Dictionary use may not be the most interesting aspect of English but it is worth a quick mention.
Students often prefer to use electronic dictionaries but I would like to remind students and parents of the importance of print dictionaries.
We put a print dictionary on the booklist every year and students do need to bring them to classes and to exams. As only print dictionaries are allowed in exams, students need to develop the habit of using them efficiently and effectively.
EAL students also need to buy and bring to class a bilingual dictionary.
Cristina Presa
Head of English/EAL
Year 7B: Mixing Plato with The Giver
Year 7B English students are challenging themselves to reimagine The Giver with Plato’s metaphysical and epistemic ideas. Students are beginning to unpack Plato’s Myth of the Cave and draw the complex visual of his account of reality and knowledge. Students will also add The Simile of the Divided Line to expand their Classical knowledge in contrast to their previous studies of Homer’s poetry. The philosophical investigation will allow students to develop a critical lens when studying contemporary literature.
Deborah Cordingley
Year 7B English teacher
Harshitha (7B) collects a writing accolade
Congratulations to Harshitha Meenakshisundaram (Year 7B) for being placed in the top 15 place-getters for the Queenscliffe Literary Festival Secondary School Writing Prize. As part of her prize, she attended a performance poetry workshop with world-renowned performance poet Emilie Zoey Baker on Sunday 26th May at Queenscliff Neighbourhood House. Harshitha will be sharing some new writing strategies she learned from Emilie with her class in term 3. It is so exciting to have a successful author amongst the Year 7 cohort and we look forward to her next story.
Deborah Cordingley
Year 7B English teacher
