It has been a busy term in the English Department. The teaching team has been working hard to deliver engaging content to the students and we are seeing some exciting achievement in their assessments. The Year 7 and 9 teachers have been so impressed at the maturity shown in the Year groups as they have completed their NAPLAN testing. It is a stressful few week, but the students have shown resilience and a can-do attitude when completing their tests. They completed the Writing, Reading and Conventions of Language tests in their English class, so there has been a small disruption to their class content, but we thank Mr Bennett and the IT Department at the school for their support throughout the testing process.

Dr Aslett’s Year 12 Literature class had an engaging lecture with a member of our English teaching team Anjali Chaurasia. As a class, they are studying Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe which is a post-colonial text. Mrs Chaurasia completed her Masters on post-colonial literature and has completed extensive study on the text, including writing on it for her final thesis. The discussion focused on a feminist reading of the text. The students asked many questions and enjoyed the opportunity to explore the text through this lens. They were appreciative of her time and effort in the lead up to their assessment.

On the 5^th of March, six students, accompanied by Ms Stokes, attended the Young Writers Collective Term 1 seminar at the Fremantle Literature Centre. Zoe Green, Audrey Coetzee, Sadie Harris, Joy Plaistowe, Charlotte Lee-Steere and Scarlett Courtenay participated in the workshops hosted by this term’s author WA writer Brendan Richtie. He focused on dystopia and climate fiction. He has written novels Carousel - which is based around the concept of being locked in Carousel shopping centre overnight, and Eta Draconis - a novel inspired by his frequent trips up and down the south coast of WA.