Suitable for: Years 11-12
Prerequisites: Poetry for Beginners OR Poetry 2A.
Duration: 3 hours a week for 5 days; 15 hours total
You know the adage: sequels are always better than the originals. If you loved Toy Story 2, The Godfather Part II, and Terminator 2, you’ll love HSC Paper 2. (Ok, maybe not, but thank God it isn’t a trilogy!)
Each section of Paper 2 is different, so if you think you can memorise an essay and succeed, you’re kidding yourself. What you need is methodical preparation and critical marking. That’s what you’ll get in this course as we cover study skills, exam preparation, and practice papers.
Suitable for: Years 7-11
Prerequisites: A content course at Shakespeare Academy (e.g. Poetry for Beginners)
Duration: 3 hours a day for 5 days; 15 hours total
Had a bad exam at the end of term? Need to improve your essay writing fast? In this course students refine all aspects of their essay writing: they learn how to structure their essays and practice answering a range of essay questions.
Suitable for: Year 11
Duration: 2 hours a for 10 days; 20 hours total
Writing Skills 301 is a Year 11 course designed for students to brush up their skills before embarking on the HSC. Through reading sample writing and peer review, students learn to finesse their writing process, and prepare them for the new HSC Module C: The Craft of Writing. Students will review and write in the text types below.
Suitable for: Years 9-10
Prerequisites: Poetry for Beginners OR Literary Techniques (one-day crash course)
Duration: 2 hours a for 10 days; 20 hours total
You're great at writing essays, are you? What about speeches? What about narratives? What about reflection statements? In this course we will revise and refine our essay-writing skills and develop our skills in other forms of writing. We will analyse some great essays, speeches, and reflection statements, and learn how to achieve the same level of greatness in our own writing.
Suitable for: Years 7-10
Duration: 3 hours every day for 5 days; 15 hours total
This course covers poetry analysis and comprehension. Students learn the vocabulary for analysing poetry, and put these to use by studying and analysing a range of poems from the 16th century to now. There are 28 poems included for study in the course. At the end of the course, students are equipped to analyse a wide variety of poetry, including Shakespearean sonnets.
Suitable for: Years 9-10
Prerequisites: Poetry for Beginners OR Literary Techniques (one-day crash course)
Duration: 2 hours a week for 10 weeks; 20 hours total
Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn and caldron bubble. This isn’t the latest episode of Masterchef, it’s Shakespeare’s Mac – wait! Don’t you know it’s bad luck to say the title of this play? And the bad luck in this Scottish tragedy is more than just burning your haggis – think ghosts, madness, and blood. Lots of it.
But what is the source of this bad luck? Is it the famous witches, or our main character’s desire to gain power no matter what? Did you fail your last exam because it was too hard or because you didn’t prepare? Don’t leave your next exam up to fate – join us at Shakespeare Academy!
In every lesson, students read extracts from Shakespeare’s text and then analyse how the literary techniques create meaning and explore the themes of the play. Each week, students are asked to provide written responses for homework, including essays, opinion pieces, and creative responses.
Suitable for: Years 8-10
Prerequisites: Poetry for Beginners OR Literary Techniques (one-day crash course)
Duration: 3 hours every day for 5 days; 15 hours total
This course covers poetry analysis and comprehension for students who have already studied a bit of poetry. Students revise the vocabulary for analysing poetry and refine their skills by reading and analysing a range of poems from the 16th century to the present. Students will also practice their essay writing by responding to the poems studied in class.
Suitable for: Years 11-12
Prerequisites: Poetry for Beginners OR Poetry 2A.
Duration: 3 hours a week for 5 days; 15 hours total
Imagine I’m Shania Twain. Okay, so your notes are great? That don’t impress me much. What is impressive is being able to turn those notes into beautiful essays under the pressure of exam conditions.
Now that I think about it, that’s too easy. You should also be able to answer unseen questions based on the format of the HSC’s Paper 1. If you join our course, you’ll be able to write slick essays and tight short-answer responses under exam conditions. And unlike Brad Pitt, you might impress Shania Twain.
Suitable for: Years 11-12
Prerequisites: Poetry for Beginners OR Poetry 2A.
Duration: 2 hours a for 5 days; 10 hours total
Your notes are perfect, your essays slick, and you can quote from your text backwards. Well, can you answer questions about texts you’ve never seen? In this course you will learn how to do just that. Over three days you will attempt a range of practice papers based on the format of the HSC’s Paper 1 Section 1. During this course you will learn how to develop short-answer responses to unseen texts in various text types.
Suitable for: Years 7-10
Duration: 2 hours every day for 5 days; 10 hours total
Shakespeare Academy is excited to present you with one of our favourite and most popular courses: English Grammar! You'll learn everything about nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, punctuation marks, adverbs... You already know all this?
Oh, okay then – you'll also learn about participles, cases, transitive (and intransitive, while we're at it), modality, distributive numeral adjectives, the subjunctive mood, misplaced modifiers (you don't want to use one of those!), adjuncts, and more!
Yup, we love our grammar – and by the end of the course, you'll love it too (or at least be much better at it)!
Suitable for: Years 11-12
Prerequisites: Poetry for Beginners OR Poetry 2A
Duration: 2 hours a week for 9-10 weeks; 18-20 hours total
Few poets of the twentieth century have been as influential as T.S. Eliot. But if he’s so influential, why is he so hard to read? In this course we will dispel the fog that lingers around Eliot and Modernism. The first half of the course is based on close readings of Eliot’s poetry and writing paragraphs analysing it. The second half of the course is based on essay writing; after considering the ideas of various scholars, students write essays about Eliot’s poetry and its context. Students will also learn about Modernism and how Eliot’s poetry explores its concerns while also giving us an insight into the present day.
Suitable for: Years 7-9
Prerequisites: Poetry for Beginners OR Literary Techniques (one-day crash course)
Duration: 2 hours a week for 10 weeks; 20 hours total
Fairies! Love Potions! A donkey’s head! Shakespeare’s comedy tells a fantastical story while making us think about love, marriage, and transformation. In every lesson, students read an extract from Shakespeare’s play. After reading each extract, students are asked to analyse how the literary techniques in the passage create meaning and explore the themes of the play. The students are then asked to share their analyses with the class and to write analytical paragraphs. Students are given two notes booklets on themes and characters, which they fill out throughout the term, and which they can use as their final study notes for any school exams. At the end of the course, students are equipped to analyse Shakespeare’s other plays.
We’re delighted to spotlight Vanessa Vu, one of our fantastic students with a passion for writing. Vanessa started learning with us from 2018, and graduated from Year 12 in 2020. Her English HSC subjects were Advanced and Extension 1 English. She loves writing poetry, stories, and other musings – she always submitted lots of written work for our feedback, and was particularly keen on creative writing homework!
Vanessa will be studying a Bachelor of Psychology at the University of Sydney. She also has a writing blog: http://scribblesandblotts.com/
Suitable for: Year 12
Duration: 2 hours a week for 9-10 weeks; 18-20 hours total
‘The Craft of Writing’ is a new HSC module that focuses on…well, the craft of writing. Specifically, we’ll be looking at writing types beyond your argumentative essays: creative/imaginative stories, discursive writing, persuasive writing, and personal essays. Additionally, we’ll be working on reflection statements, which are a special type of literary essays where you analyse your own writing.
Throughout the course, students are given a range of HSC prescribed texts to study, analyse, and emulate in their own writing. Students learn about the various writing types that are required for the HSC, and practise their writing skills on a range of topics. By the end of the course, students are equipped with the required knowledge and skills to tackle this new HSC module.
Suitable for: Year 11 | Duration: 2 hours a week for 9-10 weeks; 18-20 hours total
Prerequisites: Poetry for Beginners OR Literary Techniques (one-day crash course)
You love gossip. Don’t try to deny it. Who doesn’t like hearing about a scandal? Ever talked to your friends about what your other friends are doing when they say they’re “busy”? Maybe they’re shopping. Maybe they’re on dates. Maybe they’re part of an international spy organisation. Or maybe you should mind your own business.
The tragedy Othello, written by our man Big Billy Shakes, shows us the dangers of gossip, as the sly, cunning Iago causes the downfall of a military general, Othello, by doing little more than creating and spreading rumours. Furthermore, Othello, one of the first black protagonists in English literature, struggles with the racist remarks of those around him.
In every lesson, students read extracts from Shakespeare’s text and then analyse how the literary techniques create meaning and explore the themes of the play. Students are also given a range of secondary readings that present alternative perspectives of the play. Each week, students are asked to provide written responses for homework, including essays, opinion pieces, and creative responses.
Suitable for: Years 8-10 | Duration: 2 hours a week for 9-10 weeks; 18-20 hours total
Prerequisites: Poetry for Beginners OR Literary Techniques (one-day crash course)
Shipwrecks, cross-dressing, lost siblings, unrequited love, drinking and duelling, and the ultimate prank: yes, this is none other than Shakespeare’s festive comedy Twelfth Night! Beneath the play’s comic surface lies a range of more serious issues: class differences, gender inequality, and how much ‘fun’ is too much. You’ll get to discuss them all here at Shakespeare Academy!
In this course, you will learn about both the joy and melancholy of Twelfth Night. In every lesson, students read extracts from Shakespeare’s text and then analyse how the literary techniques create meaning and explore the themes of the play. Students are also given a range of secondary readings that present alternative perspectives of the play. Each week, students are asked to provide written responses for homework, including essays, opinion pieces, and creative responses. At the end of the course, students are equipped to analyse, understand, and appreciate Shakespeare’s other plays.
Suitable for: Years 10-11 | Duration: 2 hours a week for 9-10 weeks; 18-20 hours total
Prerequisites: Poetry for Beginners OR Literary Techniques (one-day crash course)
Additional Material Fee: $20 (one text)
It’s alive! Have you ever created a monster? We don’t mean a bad essay; we mean something that has a life of its own and frightens people. How would you react if you did create a monster?
Maybe you have never made a monster. Maybe you have written a bad post on social media? Made a bad video? We all know about ideas that initially sounded good and then went beyond everyone’s control. Initially a ghost story, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a novel about one of those interesting ideas that went horribly wrong. The novel asks if technological advance always improves human lives and asks how humans relate to their families and societies.
If you’re worried about the advances of technology (and at least one of our teachers is terrified by them) then Frankenstein is the novel for you. Costumes are optional.
Suitable for: Years 7-8
Duration: 2 hours a week for 9-10 weeks; 18-20 hours total
This course covers poetry analysis and comprehension. Students learn the vocabulary for analysing poetry, and put these to use by studying and analysing a range of poems from the 16th century to now (at least 3 poems studied per lesson). At the end of the course, students are equipped to analyse a wide variety of poetry, including Shakespearean sonnets.
Suitable for: Years 8-9 | Duration: 2 hours a week for 9-10 weeks; 18-20 hours total
Prerequisites: Poetry for Beginners OR Literary Techniques (one-day crash course)
Additional Material Fee: $40 (two texts)
Ah, the 20th century. Your grandparents helped shape it, your parents have lived through it, and you’ve learnt about some of its major historical events. But did you know that literature from the 20th century explores issues and ideas very similar to today’s? In this course students will study and analyse prose fiction from the 20th century, including works by George Orwell, Franz Kafka, and James Joyce. Students learn how to analyse and interpret texts based on context, and how to write essay and creative responses to the material studied. At the end of the course, students gain a thorough understanding of 20th century prose fiction and how the literary ideas have carried on into the 21st century.
Suitable for: Years 8-10
Prerequisites: Poetry for Beginners OR Literary Techniques (one-day crash course)
Duration: 2 hours a week for 9-10 weeks; 18-20 hours total
Romeo and Juliet might be Shakespeare’s most famous play, but how well do you know it, really? Do you know what it means to bite your thumb at someone? What is an apothecary? In this course we will answer these questions while asking what Shakespeare’s tale of star-crossed lovers can tell us about love, marriage, and listening to your parents. In every lesson, students read an extract from Romeo and Juliet and then analyse how the literary techniques in the extract create meaning and explore the themes of the play. The students are then asked to share their analyses with the class and to write analytical paragraphs. Students are taught effective note-taking techniques and fill in two notes booklets based on characters and themes, which they can use as their final study notes for any school exams. At the end of the course, students are equipped to analyse Shakespeare’s other plays.
