The essential English lesson for today
S hakespeare had it right when the young Hamlet reminded us all that our world is full of surprise, wonder, and possibility. The College Department of English and Media Studies has held this sentiment close to its heart in its innovative programme redesign. A quick survey of the classrooms of the top floor of the Miles Warren Building – the home of English and Media Studies – reveals a striking array of learning experiences. One class might be analysing Alfred Hitchcock’s cinematographic rules in preparation for the making of its own short film while another is interrogating the use of adjectival phrases to propel more vivid description in travel writing. Boys are reckoning with the nature of time in the postmodernist classic Slaughterhouse-Five yet simultaneously others are putting the finishing touches on their investigative journalism audio packages ready for their live- stream air date. The sheer breadth of the College boys’ learning experiences would HoD English Chris Waugh opens the classroom door on the student experience.
make your head spin if it were not for one thing. Underpinning everything, the teaching team has established a solid foundation of essential learning. Informed by robust educational evidence, every English programme is driven by explicit instruction of grammar in writing, structured reading practices, and an insistence on classrooms that promote social
writing. College Diploma students are examining the subtle value of the appositive phrase in their descriptive writing or identifying how using enjambment in their dramatic monologues helps to bring nuance to their rhyme. NCEA students are learning to write in a stunning array of genres and forms for their writing portfolios – every new piece allows them to exercise their fluency in grammar and structure to embody the conventions of each text – even to the extent that the students are taught how to express their own vernacular in correct grammatical forms. The boys defy all expectations on the subject of grammar. To them, grammar is fun – and they love the power this knowledge gives them. Christ’s College boys write and Christ’s College boys read. Our outstanding librarian can match even the most reluctant boy with a book, and the Department of English discusses independent reading one-to-one with every boy. Where the boys’ independent reading choices are largely left to their discretion, classroom reading is a very different story. The written texts we read in class are all selected to challenge and
construction in learning. Such is the department’s
reputation for its commitment to these research-informed practices that more than 100 teachers of English from around New Zealand attended the conference it held to share, test, and explore its way of working last May. Grammar, even the word, has been known to strike fear into the hearts of many a hardy soul. College boys are not daunted by this at all. In fact, when delivered in a rich context, and when the teaching is confident and structured, College boys are learning to recruit their knowledge of the structure of our language to drive outstanding writing in a wide variety of contexts. Year 9 boys are learning how to craft sentences in the imperative voice in order to issue exhortations in their epistolary
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MOTIVATION
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