Length: Full Year
Recommended background: Successful completion of Year 7 English
Content:
The English curriculum is built around the three interrelated strands of language, literature and literacy and teaching and learning programs balance and integrate all three strands. Together, the strands focus on developing students’ knowledge, understanding and skills in listening, reading, viewing, speaking, writing and creating. Learning in English builds on concepts, skills and processes developed in earlier years, and teachers will revisit and strengthen these as needed.
In Year 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, 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.
Students create a range of imaginative, informative and persuasive types of texts, for example narratives, procedures, performances, reports and discussions, and continue to create literary analyses and transformations of texts.
The topics and texts studied in year 8 are Representations of news media, Novel Study of A Company of Fools, Exploring human experience through poetry, Creating short stories, Television Drama, Short film, and Analysing digital texts.
Assessment:
Students’ performance will be determined according to the subject’s Achievement Standards as outlined in the framework of the Australian Curriculum. Grades A to E will be used for reporting purposes. This includes assessment of achievement in listening, reading, viewing, speaking, writing and creating.