ENGLISH Who said it’s just reading about boring old poets?
L
iteracy in the SACE is about developing “skills to understand and interpret a variety of texts and people in a range of different situations and countries. It is an every-century skill. Literacy is reading, remembering, writing, understanding, creating, and speaking.” It is vital that our students are equipped to interpret and process many different styles and text types That students have the ability to understand books, poems, plays, films, graphs, charts, cartoons, advertisements, posters, blogs, online journals and forums, the layout of a front page, and that what is NOT written can influence us and manipulate us is imperative. Our students must then be able to communicate this understanding and show that they are aware of the ‘text’ as a construct. By reproducing, emulating, and subverting the stylistic features and structure of texts they can do just that! In all English and English Literary Studies classes across Years 1012 students’ literacy – spoken, written and visual - has been tested and enhanced by ‘doing’. They have certainly displayed the ability to deconstruct and craft texts successfully in a range of styles and forms. There were many opportunities for students to display their flair for fashioning fabulous original texts in areas that both interested and challenged them.
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*often student work quoted is an extract from a longer piece.
And then there was Emily Cooper who boldly called out catcalling in the ferocious piece Smile which Some of the works produced across opens in a confronting way with; both courses are: •
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Creative pieces – descriptive, personal, persuasive and argumentative texts to name a few Short films or multimodal pieces Original poetry anthologies Scripts Magazine articles for a range of publication points and purposes Performances – play reading, spoken word and more Short stories Web pages and blogs
I am always amazed by the creativity of Eynesbury students and the way that they get involved with the topics they choose to discuss. Aileen Bourne explored stereotypes and gender roles in her spoken word piece You know the type suggesting;
‘She's the type of girl whose legs I notice, stems that look like they’re about to snap, the weight of the pressure just all too much fragile tendrils under the weight of blossoming. Or maybe it’s the weight they need to gain.’
EYNESBURY TIMES TERM 1 2019
‘Hey, hey bitch! Why don’t you smile, bitch? To the two middle-aged, white men who, living up to their stereotype, hit each other on the arm to inform each other of my presence — or rather, the presence of my ass and the non-attendance of my teeth. Hey, hey bitch! Why don’t you smile, bitch? Mechanical bitch face, lips locked, steel bar, determined, chained bitch face…’
Dante McDonald challenged what it means to be Australian, personifying Australianness as Matilda, confronting her with the comment
‘Ad - vance Aus - tra-lia Fair’? / Are you kidding me? / We’re incapable of advancing whatsoever.’
