Congratulations to the year 12 students who have completed their English exams. It is an incredible achievement and all English teachers who have been involved in your year 7-12 journey are very proud of you! 

Looking at what is happening in our classrooms, Year 10 students will experience the wonderful event of a 2-hour exam and we wish them the very best. At the junior levels, there is a wave of analysis sweeping through years 8 and 9 English where reading and analysing different forms of texts are major components of the outcomes ahead. Students have engaged with topical and provocative issues and learned (for the most part) to be objective thinkers, conscientious about the people and the world around them and finally – how to express these thoughts on paper. 

Recently, the ‘Engage’ element of our instructional model has been a priority for our faculty and some amazing activities have come from these moments at the beginning of the lesson to capture student interest. 

Ten students in the class were given ‘tone’ words in a covert manner, where they were asked to act out and respond in that way until another class member was able to guess their tone. A student who was handed the ‘Enthusiastic’ tone may have loved the role too much, achieving an Oscar winning performance. Luckily for most, another student was able to guess the tone word before the student became too ‘passionate’. It was a lovely way to start the class and an even better way to learn what to look for when it came to tone and tonal shifts in communication. 

Tyrone Ingham 
Head of English