Year 7 students have started their study of Secondary English at the College by engaging in a new way with the picture book, The Rabbits by John Marsden and Shaun Tan, developing their visual literacy and writing skills. They have been examining important concepts like sustainability and the impact of colonisation, while also learning how to create imaginative and persuasive pieces of writing.
Students choose pages that best tell the story of the rabbits and the numbats visually in terms of the well-known narrative structure of orientation, complication, climax and resolution. They then use the way that the images round out the story as a model for visual storytelling in their own writing. Choosing from related sustainability issues, students can then develop plots and persuasive arguments inspired by their reading and internet research.
While this introduces Year 7 to skills that they will need to apply throughout the next six years of schooling and beyond, students will also be able to apply what they learn in the NAPLAN writing test, which is one of the usual series of NAPLAN tests that will be undertaken, this year, in Weeks 7 and 8.
Mr David GawthorneFaculty Coordinator - English
