Please note: we are undergoing a transition to the new syllabus in 2024 and 2025.
In Years 7–10 English, students enhance language skills through reading, writing, and exploring diverse texts. Emphasising effective communication, they engage with literature, past and present, as well as various media. The course accommodates Life Skills outcomes and content for students with disabilities.
Course aim
- To continue the process of enabling the students to use language in a variety of modes.
- To prepare students for the school and higher school certificates.
What students learn
Students practice language proficiency for diverse contexts, fostering imaginative, interpretive, and critical thinking. They analyse texts, distinguish fact from opinion, and reflect on learning strategies. Developing skills in writing, reading, and communication, they shape precise, coherent texts, mastering sentence structures, grammar, punctuation, vocabulary and spelling. The students learn:
- extended prose (novel)
- poetry
- film
- drama text (play, including Shakespeare)
- visual literacy
- short prose, spoken, multimodal and digital text.
How students learn
- composing imaginative and expository texts
- responding to and composing a range of multimedia tasks
- computer based tasks
- oral presentations.
What students learn
Year 9
Term 1
- Poetry: Critical Thinking and Writing
- Comparative: Shakespearean Adaptation
- Focus text/s: Hamlet / The Lion King
Term 2
- Novel Study: Genre - Survival
- Focus text/s: The Outsiders / Holes / Fahrenheit 451
Term 3
- Close Study: Film / Auteur Study
- Focus text/s: Taika Waititi / Tim Burton
Term 4
- Poetry: War Poetry
Year 10
Term 1
- Thematic: Literary Monsters
- Focus text/s: Various fiction and non-fiction texts
Term 2
- Thematic: Murder She Wrote (Poetry - Poe)
- Focus text/s: Various crime-fiction and true-crime texts
Term 3
- Comparative Shakespearean Drama
- Focus text/s: Romeo and Juliet / Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet
Term 4
- Documentary
- Focus text/s: Supersize Me