Year 7 & 8 English

Semester 1 

Throughout Semester One, students participate in the Renaissance Reading Program. This program develops reading comprehension skills. Students read novels and complete quizzes to show their literal comprehension. Students complete a STAR reading test to show mastery of skills: Vocabulary; Understanding and Interpreting Texts; Engaging and Responding to Texts.

In Term One, students engage in a scaffolded study of various short stories, where they discuss themes and characters presented throughout the texts. When working towards a Level 7 standard, students begin to demonstrate an understanding of how the choice of language, images and vocabulary affect meaning and how the selection of a variety of language features can influence an audience. Students listen for and explain different perspectives in texts.

In Term Two, students study the novel, ‘Blueback', by Tim Winton; a story about family and living a life in tune with the environment. Students explore themes that relate to belonging, conflict, community, the sea, conservation, and relationships and learn how to use evidence from the text to support their understanding when responding analytically. 

Semester 2 

In Semester 2, students study the film text, A Monster Calls, and engage in a persuasive writing unit where they will learn how to critically anaylse a text, form arguments, choose language to influence their intended audience, as well as finding evidence to support their claims. Students also gain knowledge of media and news – how it informs and affects us, and how it shapes our opinion of the world. They will apply critical and analytical thinking to the information they source, culminating in an online digital portfolio.

Semester 1 

Students undertake a study of the novel ‘Us Mob Walawurru’. The unit begins by contextualising the setting before moving to weekly class readings, comprehension tasks, and associated learning activities. This unit concludes with the completion of a  text response essay as the summative assessment.

Students will then review and build on the skills required to be persuasive. Learning tasks in this unit include persuasive reading, writing, speaking and listening. The core skills within the unit will see students analysing arguments for and against a particular issue in current community debates and justifying a personal stance.

Semester 2 

Students apply the skills gained from the novel study in Semester One to independently analyse their own chosen text. Their chosen text follows the literary structure of "The Hero’s Journey". They apply the key skills of contextualisation, characterisation and theme to their own text.

In the unit ‘Sharing Stories’, students explore the five multimodal textual elements in storytelling including audio, visual, gestural, spatial, and linguistic. They choose language features to adapt their story telling for intended audiences. They understand that multimodal text enhances and layer meaning.