Students will engage in a comprehensive exploration of texts, emphasising reading comprehension, critical thinking and effective writing. The course integrates diverse genres to provide a dynamic and enriching learning experience. This course is tailored to prepare students for the Selective High Schools Placement Test as well as scholarship tests.
Course objectives
Vocabulary is included in most weeks. Homework includes a writing task that is teacher-marked, and other activities that are self-marked. There is no homework in week 10.
Week 1: Idioms and proverbs, understanding moral and theme, paired texts comprehension, narrative plot structure: conflict, characterisation, text analysis, brainstorming
Week 2: Poetry techniques, poetry analysis, paired poems comprehension, persuasive essay structure: body paragraphs, avoiding circular reasoning, focus on audience, refutation, text analysis
Week 3: Cloze – sentence gap-match, word fill-in-the-blank, persuasive speech, rhetorical devices, the impact statement
Week 4: Linked extracts, word fill-in-the-blank, types of personal recount, text analysis, paired texts comprehension
Week 5: Mock test and review, features of a review, text analysis
Week 6: Review of all reading sections, writing lists: parallel structure, advice/information sheet, text analysis
Week 7: Review of all reading sections, phrasal verbs, features of a formal letter, text analysis, brainstorming
Week 8: Review of all reading sections, newspaper report structure, text analysis, using quotes and reported speech, brainstorming
Week 9: Reading and writing assessment & review; proverbs; compare & contrast narrative text analysis
Week 10: Practice test & review; narrative text analysis