English Department Highlights – Celebrating Stories, Creativity and Shakespeare
It has been an exciting and engaging term for the English Department, with students and staff coming together to celebrate literature, creativity and performance through our revived Book Week celebrations and a special Bell Shakespeare incursion for Year 8.
Book Week Comes to Life!
Book Week brought plenty of colour, creativity and friendly competition to the College, beginning with our Where’s Wally? theme. Staff across the College swapped their usual attire for the unmistakable red-and-white stripes and blue jeans, creating a wonderful sense of fun and community spirit.
Throughout the week, students participated in a series of reading, guessing, artistic and musical competitions and activities, providing opportunities to celebrate books and storytelling in many different forms. It was wonderful to see students enthusiastically testing their literary knowledge, expressing their creativity and getting involved.
Our Mystery Book Stall was another highlight and a wonderful success. Thanks to the generosity of staff and the wider Good Samaritan Catholic College community, we received an incredible number of donated books and raised close to $300, with proceeds donated to the Catholic Charitable Works Fund.
A special thank you to our College Library Assistants, staff and students who helped prepare and run the activities, and most importantly, to our students for embracing the return of Book Week with such enthusiasm.
All the World’s a Stage – Year 8 Bell Shakespeare Incursion
Our Year 8 students were also treated to a memorable visit from Bell Shakespeare, bringing the world of Shakespeare from the page to the stage through an engaging performance centred on Romeo and Juliet.
The incursion provided students with the opportunity to experience Shakespeare as it was intended – through live performance. The actors brought the characters, conflicts, humour and tragedy of Romeo and Juliet to life, allowing students to see how voice, movement, dramatic tension and stagecraft can transform Shakespeare’s language for a contemporary audience.
The experience was a wonderful complement to students’ learning in English and an opportunity to discover that Shakespeare, despite being written centuries ago, can still be energetic, entertaining and relevant to audiences today.
From Where’s Wally to William Shakespeare, it has been wonderful to see our students engaging with stories in so many different ways – reading them, performing them, creating them and, most importantly, enjoying them.
Enjoy some of the highlights from our English Department events below!
