You have ten minutes.

Cover of Runner

Hello all,

I am sorry that I didn’t get to tell most of you this in person, but something has come up. I will be working at the Vines Road campus for the next three weeks, and Miss Jones will be your teacher in my place.

You are all heading for serious tasks: the closed-book Maestro task, and the trial of Charlie Feehan and an essay in response to Runner. Please work as well for Miss Jones as you did for me, perhaps even better.

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Students in Morphing English and Grammar and Writing, you can finally collect your red books and see how you went in the exams. Just ask at the general office at Quamby and the book is yours to keep.

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I wanted to set a quick shout-out to everyone who made the Year 10 Formal such a terrific night. I’d especially like to mention the work of the formal committee and Ms Galloway, who did heaps of the behind-the-scene stuff that made the night happen. Liz, too, deserves recognition for the wonderful work that she did as our official photographer. It was great to see so many students, and staff, posing and clowning around for the camera. And thanks to everyone who attended for making it such an enjoyable night.

For those of you who went to the formal, you will be able to see the photos from Thursday on the W drive on my OMEAM folder.

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Well, Year 10s, here we are in the final week of this unit.

On Tuesday, you’ll have another 100 minutes to keep writing you story in the new, red book.

On Thursday, we won’t have class because of the Year 10 exams. And on Friday, we’ll have our exam for this subject.

In the 100 minutes of the exam, you will write more of your story, paying particular attention to making it the best writing that you can imagine. This means that all of the spelling, punctuation, and grammar will be correct. It also means using interesting words and making your story and characters interesting.

It’s quite a challenge, but I am confident that you characters are up to it, particularly you, Ben. The start of your story sounds really good.

On Monday, we’ll finish reading Minority Report.

On Tuesday, in the single session, you can do some Esperanto revision in preparation for the exam.

On Wednesday, we’ll do some revision about Adjustment Bureau, also in preparation for the exam.

And on Friday, of course, you’ll have 100 minutes to complete the exam for this subject. Look, I just started a sentence with “and”. And, the world did not stop spinning.

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There will be three parts to the exam for Morphing English.

1. Esperanto translation. I give you an short text in Esperanto and enough vocabulary for you to accurately translate this text into Standard English.

2. Short-answer questions about the film The Adjustment Bureau

3. Short-answer questions about how words come into English.

4. Correctly punctuate five “broken” sentences.

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We are nearly at the end of our time together, Year 10s and, yes Jack, there has been a lot of writing. But wait, there’s more.

This week, you will have most of the 250 that we spend together to work on your extended story in your new, red book.

You have some planning, but when I see you we’ll workshop how to divide our story into a beginning, middle, and end.

In simple term, the beginning is where we introduce the characters and place. At the start of the middle section, we introduce a problem that the character has to overcome. Solving this problem is at the very heart of your story. All those archetypal stories that we talked about have problems that drive the story. These problems often look very different to one another, but they are all a situation that the main character(s) has to react to. In the final act, the end, your characters solve this problem.

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It’s going to a very varied week this week, Year 10s.

On Monday, I will be away being a student myself, so you will have another teacher. He or she will bring a collection of news articles about language change (there are more of these than you would imagine). Each article has about five questions that go with it. In the 100 minutes on Monday, I expect that each of you will complete two articles and their associated questions.

On Tuesday, I will be very much back at school, and we will continue to read Minority Report.

On Wednesday, we will finished off those presentation about words and where they come from. If we have time at the end of Wednesday’s session, then we’ll start our revision for the exam next week.

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Cosi: “All the characters are mad in Cosi.” To what extent do you agree?

Maestro: Neither Paul or Keller experience genuine growth in the novel Maestro.

Identity and Belonging: Real identity can only come from a clear and shared purpose.

Language Analysis: How does the writer used language to persuade in this piece?

And, as a last-day special, I will respond within two hours to any practice essays that you send me. You can also come and see me any time between 9.30 and 1.30 today.

Step 2: Three characters – can be pure archetypes or hybrids

Step 3: Write the back story of your protagonist – age, gender, family, education, location, experiences

Step 4: Write the back story of another major character

Step 5: Your major character is five years old and home alone for two hours. Write a short story about how she or he spends the time.