English Faculty – Bernadette Coppock
Poetry In Action Incursion
“How will you use your voice? When will you speak up?”
On Wednesday of Week 6, Year 9 English classes were treated to an incursion run by Poetry In Action titled ‘Riots and Revolutions’. In this interactive performance, the players reinforced concepts of rhetoric (ethos, logos, pathos and kairos) through performed extracts of famous speeches, such as:
- Carl Sagan’s ‘Pale Blue Dot’ speech
- Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator’ monologue
- Greta Thunberg’s ‘Our House is on Fire’ speech
Our Year 9 students were an engaged and polite audience, who had positive feedback on the performance. They were challenged to think deeply about the speeches that they have studied in class in their unit on ‘Persuasion’, many of which were included in the performance. This incursion was a perfect pairing for their upcoming assessment task, which asks them to compose a speech using the pillars of rhetoric to persuade their audience.
We look forward to seeing how year 9 will, inspired by this performance, use their voices to speak up about issues that matter to them!
Ms Berger, English Faculty
Mrs Bernadette Coppock
Instructional Leader of Curriculum – English