This course includes both reading and writing. Students will engage in a comprehensive exploration of texts, emphasising reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. They will learn about different text types and purposes, and apply what they learn in their reading texts to their writing.
In this Extension course, the expectation is that students will be able to comprehend material more easily, discuss ideas with greater analysis, and write at a more advanced level. The lesson materials will include additional questions or activities, or more difficult materials, or engage students at a higher cognitive level. This course assists in the preparation for Selective High School Placement and Scholarship tests.
Course objectives
Week 1: Elements of a narrative, narrative structure, crafting engaging similes, text analysis, brainstorming, cloze activity, non-fiction comprehension
Week 2: Narrative point of view, types of narrative conflict, text analysis, fiction comprehension and analysis
Week 3: Techniques in poetry, poetry comprehension, dialogue punctuation, character description and analysis
Week 4: ‘Show, don't tell’, text analysis, semicolons and colons, linked extracts, poetry comprehension
Week 5: Newspaper report structure, text analysis, crafting headlines, including quotations, text structure, summarising the main idea, cloze – subheadings and sentences
Week 6: Parts of a persuasive essay, PEEL, text analysis, commas, cloze – word fill-in-the-blank
Week 7: Reading and vocabulary comprehension, paired texts comprehension, advertisements, the triangle of rhetoric, persuasive techniques, linked extracts
Week 8: Structure and features of information reports, fact & opinion, subjective & objective language, text analysis, poetry comprehension and analysis, cloze – subheadings
Week 9: Reading and writing assessments & review, concise writing and tautologies
Week 10: Run-on sentences, reading comprehension and analysis