While much of the English curriculum focuses on enrichment, the English Faculty has developed and continued to refine and up-date specific programmes which further aim to extend and enrich the student’s knowledge, understanding, application, processes, skills and interests that are appropriate to the developmental abilities and interests (e.g. intellectual, cultural, social) of the student.

The semester core thematic units at Year 9 include Science-Fiction, Heroes and the Quest Narrative and Language of Advertising. At Year 10 level, students undertake the Lord of the Flies Webquest, Teenagers and Society, and the Wide Reading Project. Each unit offers students a range of learning opportunities that enables them to demonstrate their knowledge and achievements against the standards from all three strands of Personal and Social learning, Discipline-based learning and Interdisciplinary learning.

In addition, the websites on the core texts studied at Years 9 and 10 include a range of enrichment tasks. Each section of the web sites provide students with a variety of stimulating and rich activities and tasks, that they may undertake as part of regular coursework or as an extension of coursework. While a range of rich tasks are incorporated throughout the units, each site contains a specific enrichment tasks page. These tasks cater for different learning styles and have been designed to consolidate students’ understanding and extend their knowledge and acquisition of a range of learning skills. Students are expected to complete at least one enrichment task as part of coursework.

Extension Tasks

In addition to these enrichment units, the English Faculty has developed a series of units that provide students with opportunities to further consolidate their learning as well as to challenge and extend themselves through self-directed learning. These units assume that students have developed proficiency in their English studies to undertake these tasks independently and with confidence. These tasks are undertaken in the student’s own time in addition to their regular coursework.