Welcome to English

Committed to the Highest Quality

Barker’s English Department is committed to the provision and delivery of educational outcomes of the highest quality. We are committed to excellence in our programming and task design in accordance with the spirit, recommendations, rubrics and prescriptions of the NSW English syllabuses. These guide us in our design of scope and sequence statements, teaching and learning units and assessment tasks. The unit templates have been designed to facilitate ongoing reflection and refinement and to return us at all times to the English syllabuses and in Year 12, to the prescriptions document.

Snoopy Resources

A huge effort has gone into providing “online” services and resources on the intranet for students and teachers, including information on teaching programs, supplement learning resources, visual texts, and assessments. Snoopy/Resources/English/Document Access allows access to services and resources through the Barker intranet.

Middle School English Experience

The English programmes in Years 7, 8 and 9 are designed to provide educational opportunities that engage and challenge all students. Through responding to and composing a wide range of texts in context and through close study of texts, students will develop broad skills, knowledge and understanding.

Opportunities for Involvement

Middle School English classrooms are vibrant and varied, with students, amongst other things, engaging fortnightly in a Library Boys and Books reading programme, participating in numerous writing and speaking forums, and contributing hugely both to the school’s successful annual literary publication and to the writers’ weekend at The Grange. Incursions and excursions supplement teaching and learning, frequently exposing students to professional drama, poetry and film composers, as well as to writers’ in residence and visiting authors.

The Year 10 program provides a bridge between the Middle and Senior schools, as well as offering preparation for the School Certificate English literacy test.

Senior English

The purpose of the Higher School Certificate program of study is to:

• provide a curriculum structure which encourages students to complete secondary education;

• foster the intellectual, social and moral development of students

• provide a flexible structure within which students can prepare for:

            – further education and training; employment; full and active participation as citizens;

• provide formal assessment and certification of students’ achievements;

• provide a context within which schools also have the opportunity to foster students’ intellectual and spiritual development

Enrichment and Experience

Our senior students are meaningfully engaged in numerous English-related activities:  dramatic productions; debates; public speaking forums; the composition and design of visual representations, picture books, short films; and so forth.

Explore this website further to find out more about our English Department.

Ben Batchen

Head of English: 2008