Subject Details - 9 English

  
Subject Length2 semesters
DescriptionThe Year 9 English program is designed to support development related to the three interrelated strands of language, literature and literacy. Each topic builds listening, reading, viewing, speaking, writing and creating skills.

Each semester, students analyse, interpret, create, evaluate, discuss and perform a wide range of literary texts designed to entertain, inform and persuade. Texts studied are selected from a range of genres and involve complex, challenging and unpredictable plot sequences and hybrid structures. Students explore themes of human experience and cultural significance, interpersonal relationships, and ethical and global dilemmas. The issues involve levels of abstraction, higher-order reasoning and intertextual references. Students also experience a range of perspectives including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices and classic and contemporary texts from around the globe and begin to critically understand how texts and language are influenced by context.

As students study these texts, they are challenged to grow their use of language features including successive complex sentences with embedded clauses, a high proportion of unfamiliar and technical vocabulary, and figurative and rhetorical language.

Across years 9 and 10, our focus shifts from reading to developing the writing capability of students. Language features and structure, specific to persuasive and descriptive writing, are explicitly taught during each semester. Students participate in Low Stakes Writing activities, allowing them to develop confidence when composing texts and experimenting with their own writing style. Essay writing is also explicitly taught, preparing students for success in their senior years



Topics

Topics include:
Understanding prose fiction
Speculative Fiction
Analysing persuasive literary devices in representations of Australia’s peoples, cultures, and histories
Analysing persuasive literary devices
Critical reading of short texts
Performing poetry
Responding to texts, such as a film and a novel
AssessmentStudents create a range of imaginative, informative and persuasive types of texts, which are assessed against the Australian Curriculum Achievement Standards, including the:

• Receptive Mode – Listening, Reading and Viewing.
• Productive Mode - Speaking, Writing and Creating.