In Year 7, there is one Focus English class available for those students identified as requiring additional support in the two modes, receptive and productive. Focus English covers similar content and assessment as the general English Year 7 course. Students in Focus will receive specialised remediation in a smaller group environment. The aim of this course is to provide assistance at point of need, thus enhancing the student’s understanding of the key skills and concepts. This is not a fixed placement and students can move from this stream on a term-by-term basis according to performance and teacher evaluation.

As part of the Australian National Curriculum students undertaking English are provided with the skills to listen to, read, view, speak, write and create an increasingly sophisticated range of texts. We aim to create a confident communicator who appreciates and uses the English language creatively and critically in a range of contexts and for a range of purposes.

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.

The range of literary texts for Foundation to Year 10 comprises Australian literature, including the oral narrative traditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, as well as the contemporary literature of these two cultural groups, and classic and contemporary world literature, including texts from and about Asia.

The curriculum has been organised in three interrelated strands:

Language: focuses on knowledge of the English language and how it works
Literature: focuses on understanding, appreciating, responding to, analysing and creating literature;
Literacy: focuses on interpreting and creating a range of types of texts with accuracy, fluency and purpose.

Students will be assessed according to the national Achievement Standards in two modes receptive (listening, reading and viewing) and productive (speaking, writing and creating).

The aim of this course is to provide a back to basics approach in the first semester, thus focusing on the student’s understanding and consolidation of the key skills and concepts necessary for high school, and in preparation for NAPLAN. The English course is to be task driven with students maintaining a portfolio of their work while the reporting of achievement will be described in terms of an overall grade and mark. This course concentrates on and incorporates a vast number of activities designed to develop skills in the use of Information and Communication Technology. Access to the Internet from home will be beneficial for completion of some aspects of this course.

At the end of the course students’ whole year performance will be used to inform the next year’s placement in the Focus, Mainstream and Extension classes. These are not fixed placement streams and students may move between streams on a term-by-term basis according to performance and teacher evaluation.