Week 1 Term 4 - English Department: Term 3 Review + Plan for Term 4 (October 9 - October 13)

Term 4 English Department

Term 3 was a full term for our department. Term 3 is a term where we are closing assessments with our senior classes, exploring and responding to texts with our junior classes and we are preparing our students for derived grade assessment. I am deeply grateful and humbled for the English Department - Mrs Pravina Harde, Mrs Christine Williams, Mr Faiyaz Hoosein, Mr Jeremy Spruyt, Ms Anahina, Ms Francis Kolo and Mrs Vivene Jenson-Jones - I am so thankful to work alongside you. Thank you for standing in the gap when I was called away for family. Thank you for your patience, love and support this term.

Here are some highlights for the English Department Term 3.

English Department Resource Room
Our English Resource Room was a space for our staff to meet, discuss and unwind together. Post COVID-19, it became a space that we did not utilize properly. In Term 3, we returned to the resource room, cleaned it up and we are now using it as our primary meeting space. We are looking forward to making the room our own.

Designing + Refining our new NCEA Level 1 English Course 2024 (Week 7 Term 3 - August 28 2023)
Since Term 2, we have started to design our new NCEA Level 1 English Course Outline (in line with the curriculum refresh). In Term 3, we have narrowed down the three assessments that we will be offering to our students with a total of 15 credits. We will be offering two internal assessments (1.1 and 1.2) and one external assessment (1.3) to be assessed in Term 3. We are excited by the new change and what we will be sharing with our students in 2024. We are looking at a course that is reflective of our students, school and wider community. We want to focus on delivering rich and meaningful content with the assessments falling underneath it all.

Preparing our students for the new Literacy Standard (Pilot)
In Term 3, we have started our pilot for the new Literacy Standard. We have selected a group of 21 students from our current Year 10 cohort who are at Level 4E - 5A of the curriculum to take part in the pilot. We met with the students every Monday (period 5) to prepare them for the new standard. There is a huge focus on reading and writing skills - such as locating information, understanding the writer’s purpose and main idea. This has been an awesome opportunity for both the student and staff to get familiar with the new standard which is a co-requisite for NCEA Level 1 2024. We are currently doing practice tests with the students and will roll out a practice online test with the students in Term 4. The pilot assessment will take place in Week 4 Term 4.

Our Voices - Tamaki College Student Work Publication
We have been discussing how to promote our subject area and also celebrate our akonga’s work. This discussion started in 2022 and in Term 3, Mr Jeremy Spruyt has created our first publication of ‘Our Voices’ - a collection of Tamaki College student work in English (Year 9 - Year 13). We are really excited about this and we look forward to sharing this with our students, staff, school and community in Term 4.

We will now review our Term 3 Junior and Senior English program.

  

JUNIOR ENGLISH TERM 3 REVIEW

Our focus for Year 9 and Year 10 English was Visual Text. We spent the term going through our visual text (film) study for 2023. Some of the texts that were covered this term were:

• Byron Howard + Jared Bush - Encanto (Year 9 English)
• Taika Waititi - Two Cars One Night (Year 9 English)
• Peter Weir - The Truman Show (Year 10 English)

Following the visual text study, our students worked on our CAT (Common Assessment Task) Close Viewing. The students were engaged with the Close Viewing CAT and we are pleased with the results. We are hoping to close the loop with students who were not able to complete it during the first week of Term 4.

Below are some examples of the Close Viewing from our akonga. Their understanding on how to view a text closely and understand how the techniques are used from the text is impressive.

Student exemplar of Close Viewing for Year 9 English

SENIOR ENGLISH TERM 3 REVIEW

The focus for Term 3 for our NCEA Level 1, 2 and 3 students was finishing their internal assessments and preparing them for their Derived Grade Assessment (Week 10 Term 3). It has been a journey with our students. Low attendance has meant that many of our students are still behind with completing their internal assessments. We are pleased with the achievement data and we are hoping to close the loop with the internal assessments in Term 4. We are looking forward to closing the gap in Term 4!

We are hoping to close our internal assessments across our NCEA Level 1 - 3 English class a week prior to their NCEA English Exam (starting Week 5 - Week 7). We are aware of the areas of opportunities especially with our students who have not met credit protocol, we are going to do all that we can to ensure that they achieve in English . We look forward to working with our NCEA Level 1, 2 and 3 English students in Term 4.

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT GOALS TERM 4

As a department, we like to discuss what our priorities and goals are. Sometimes our priorities change as we journey through the term but we try to stick to our goals as best as we can.

Below are some of the goals that we would like to work towards in Term 4

NCEA Level 1 English Course - We have decided what our new course outline will look for NCEA Level 1 English (in line with the curriculum refresh). Finalizing this and publishing the final version will solidify the end of the draft process.

Unit Plan for NCEA Level 1 English Internal Assessments - We want to flesh out and plan the unit plans for the new internal assessments for Level 1 English (1.1 + 1.2). This will give us an idea on what we are going to do in Term 1, Term 2 and Term 3. Here is the planning for 1.1: 91924 + 1.2: 91925. We will continue to design the units in Term 4. 

Redesign our Junior English Program - To align with the new curriculum refresh and the new literacy standards, I want to redesign our Junior English program (for both Year 9 + Year 10) so that it flows well into our new NCEA Level 1 English course.

Ticking off all the boxes - Here is our Junior English and Senior English Program for Term 4. Our target and goals are here and the dates we need to complete them by. This is from our discussion during our English Department meeting. 

I am looking forward to finishing this year off well with the team.