High School English

23 December 2021

Assalaamu Alaikum Dear Parents / Caregivers,

This term students in the middle school celebrated literature in a number of ways. Many classes completed book week centered activities and we had two middle school competitions for students to enter.

Creative Writing Competition

We had many entries for the creative writing competition and it was especially difficult to choose a winner. However, one story stood out from the rest for its creativity, structure and theme incorporation.

Please find below the winning entry from Hanis Arief, a twisted story about fairies in an alternate world.

Costume Competition

We were absolutely amazed with the effort our middle school students went to for their literary inspired costumes. We had many more students participating this year than last year which was wonderful to see. The middle school students even presented their costumes at the Book Week parade which was an excellent show of school spirit.

We had a winner from each year level for the most creative costume. Winners were chosen for their creativity and choice of specific literary characters. Below you will find a picture of the winners.

Debating Club

After the success of our debating workshop last term, the English department will be starting a weekly debating club. Expression of interest forms have already gone out to students. Anyone can join, they just need to return their form with their name on it. Please see Mrs Lewis if you have lost your form.

This club will run one day after school each week. Students will learn the structure of a formal debate, persuasive skills, research a variety of current issues and perform debates against other teams. Initially these debates will be against one another but once our skills have developed we have hopes of joining the debating SA interschool’s competition.

Year 7

This term the year 7s read the novel ‘Holes’ by Louis Sachar. The students investigated the key theme of relationships and why it is important to have healthy relationships within our lives. Students completed a number of activities which explored the characters in the novel, themes and plot. Please see below a character analysis by Hanis Arief.

Year 8

This term the year 8s read the play ‘An Inspector Calls’ by J. B. Priestley. This detective fiction allowed students to analyse social responsibility, gender roles and world history. Students learnt to anlayse character motivations and make inferences about thought processes in relation to the context of the novel. Students also wrote 100 word stories this term. These stories could be about anything but they needed to be 100 exactly. Below you will find a great example from Mr Pagonis’ English class.

Year 9

This term the year 9 students explored Children’s literature. Their task was to choose a complex issue such as racism, COVID-19, refugees or bullying and create a children’s story that explained their issue in simple terms for young children to understand. They had to use a range of figurative language techniques and include illustrations.

The year 9 students also read the novel ‘Catching Teller Crow’ by Ambelin & Ezekiel Kwaymullina, a mystery novel which explores Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) histories and culture. Students then worked in groups to create a podcast which analysed the novel and also an important issue to the ATSI people.

Year 10

This term the year 10s explored the power of stories through reading the autobiography ‘Chinese Cinderella’ by Adelin Yen Mah. Students created their own autobiographies to share their own stories with their class mates and they also wrote essays which analysed key ideas from the class text. Below you will find an essay written by Nadir Abdulle.

– Holly Lewis

Middle School English Coordinator

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