Course Outlines:
The Years 9 and 10 English courses are designed to meet the requirements of the Australian Curriculum and are built around the three interrelated strands of language, literature, and literacy. Together, the strands focus on developing students' knowledge, understanding and skills in listening, reading, viewing, speaking, writing and creating. The course provides students with opportunities to engage with a variety of texts. These include various types of media texts, film, fiction, poetry, and multimodal texts, with themes and issues involving levels of abstraction, higher order reasoning and intertextual references. Students will focus on developing a critical understanding of the contemporary media and the differences between media texts.
Students will also engage with literary texts that support and extend them as independent readers. Such texts are drawn from a range of genres and involve complex and challenging structures that may serve multiple purposes. These texts explore several themes, including that of human experience and cultural significance. The texts represent: a variety of perspectives, a synthesis of technical and abstract information, and more complex text structures and language features that include a high proportion of unfamiliar and technical vocabulary, figurative and rhetorical language, and dense information supported by various types of graphics presented in visual form.
Students will create a range of imaginative, informative and persuasive types of texts including narratives, procedures, performances, reports, discussions, literary analyses, transformations of texts and reviews.
In Semester 2 of Year 10, the QCAA Short Course in Literacy is run as a preparation for English Essential in senior secondary.
Assessment:
In assessments students are provided with opportunities to comprehend, create and respond to a range of imaginative, analytical and persuasive texts. Assessments will take the form of:
Ø extended responses, and/or
Ø examinations.
All assessment items are fully explained by the classroom teacher and are detailed on the task sheet. All tasks are assessed against common criteria.
Homework:
Students are expected to complete homework daily to consolidate classroom learning and develop good study habits. It is expected that students engage in:
Ø daily reading
Ø revision of knowledge, skills and concepts in order to reinforce and consolidate classwork
Ø drafting and finalising assignment tasks.
How can you support your child in the study of this subject?
Ø Help your child to create regular routines and study habits.
Ø Ensuring your child has a quiet space free from distractions.
Ø Encouraging regular reading of a variety of texts, as well as actively developing more
sophisticated vocabulary.
Ø Encouraging regular writing will help improve their communication skills, clarity of ideas
and words, and critical and creative thinking skills.
Ø Talk to your child about their texts – ask questions and share opinions.
Ø Help your child develop independent learning skills.