Year 8 English

Course Description

In Years 7 and 8, students interact with peers, teachers, individuals, groups and community members in a range of face-to-face and online/virtual environments. They experience learning in both familiar and unfamiliar contexts that relate to the school curriculum, local community, and regional and global contexts.

Students engage with a variety of texts for enjoyment. They listen to, read, view, interpret, evaluate and perform a range of spoken, written and multimodal texts in which the primary purpose is aesthetic, as well as texts designed to inform and persuade. These include various types of media texts including newspapers, magazines and digital texts, early adolescent novels, non-fiction, poetry and dramatic performances. Students develop their understanding of how texts, including media texts, are influenced by context, purpose and audience.

Topics from Learning Assessment Plan

• Text Study (Short Stories)
• Narrative (story writing)
• Persuasive writing (advocacy)
• Intertextuality study (Vikings)
• Novel Study – The Outsiders
• Creative Expression (Song/Poetry)

Assessment and Rationale

Assessment and learning in English will reflect on two main assessment types; responding to texts and text creation.

Text response:

The intertextual response between How to Train Your Dragon and Beowulf, a response to the novel ‘The Outsiders’.

Text Creation:

Letter to Government, Delivery of a speech or advertisement for a holiday campaign, Narrative story creation.

English : what is it for?

Watch the video below for further insight, and to find out precisely why English is such an important part of the curriculum.