English

Course Information

English is a compulsory subject from Year 9 to Year 12. 

Our English results are reported to the St John's College Board annually, and we are proud that year after year our school’s English NCEA results are well above the national statistics for boys at Decile 5 schools.  Commendable statistics include our Māori and Pasifika students.  Our Excellence and Merit results are also extremely high.  Most years we gain Scholarships. These results are, in part, due to a fine junior programme.

Junior Programme

Assessing abilities and adjusting programmes to meet students’ needs and abilities are vital.  The Deputy Principal leading Curriculum,  administers Progress and Achievement Test (PAT) results twice yearly.  They work with our SENCO and Learning Support Department, to provide important information to staff including specific learning requirements.

Our Junior English Programme is designed to prepare students for NCEA and to become life-long learners. Most Year 9 classes are not streamed so differentiated learning practices are important.

Year 10 classes are streamed into one large Accelerate Class, two mid-band classes, and a small Learning Support class.  The students from the Year 10 Accelerate Class continue to achieve high standards in their future years in reading and writing.  The Scholarship programme later builds on the work done in this Accelerate Class.

Teaching practice is based on the Year 9 and 10 Teachers’ Handbooks, which have common summative assessments for all ten NCEA standards: ‘Written Texts’ has sub-sections: novel, and short texts (short story and poetry) to ensure that a wide variety of literature is taught. Junior Examinations are important.  Three ‘Written Texts’ (a short story, poem and novel) and an ‘Oral/Visual Text’ are assessed in class assessments at the end of each unit of work during the year and again in the College Examinations.  The College Examinations are two hours and include Written Texts, Visual Oral Text and Unfamiliar Texts (students read and assess the effects of language features in an unfamiliar piece of prose and a poem).  These assessments model the NCEA External Examinations. 

We provide separate Year 9 and 10 Learning Support Exams and reports on these, aligning them to our College Exam.

Junior Assessments are used for a variety of reasons. To improve students’ learning, in-class summative assessments are used as both assessment of what has been learned, and as a teaching tool for future units.  The class assessments and the College Examination identify students who need future support or extension.  Year 9 and 10 class assessments are combined with the Examination grades when selecting the next year’s classes.  We use a consistent examination structure so trends and tracking can be seen.

Head of Department: Louisa Berry - lberry@stjohns.school.nz