This course is a combination of Media Studies and English - you can mix and match pretty much whichever assessments you like from these subjects to best suit your program. A list of MEDIA STUDIES STANDARDS CAN BE FOUND HERE and ENGLISH STANDARDS HERE.
Last term, we sampled several novels and settled on 'Dune' as a combination film and novel study. We're currently about halfway through the book and film, and will aim to finish this study off in term three.
IMPORTANT: Anyone new to the class in term three will be expected to have read half of 'Dune' (the novel) before joining the class - if you haven't, you will be largely lost, and this class will mostly be a waste of your time.
At the end of the term, students will be asked to complete an assessment based on our study. Usually, students will lean towards completing at least one of these standards per term:
- Script Writing (Med 1.8) - 3 credits
- Creative Writing (Eng 1.4) - 3 credits
- Formal Writing (Eng 1.5) - 3 credits
- Designing & Making a Short Film (Med 1.5, Med 1.6) - 3 credits + 6 credits
- Creating a Visual Text (Eng 1.7) - 3 credits
- Personal Responses to Texts (Eng 1.10) - 4 credits
- Analysing Film Techniques (Med 1.2, Eng 1.11) - 3 credits each
Warning 1: You really should have your head around the various NCEA standards before entering this class! This approach is not recommended for those students who require a lot of additional classroom support, but this approach does tend to work well for self-directed students.
Warning 2: Being a senior course, some of the texts studied later in the year will inevitably be R13 - those students who are not yet that age are encouraged to try the 'Baby Minglish' course in Purple.
Warning 3: Students will need access to a device, and it'd be preferable for them to set up a goodreads.com account beforehand (you can just use your school email to do this if you like). If you haven't been in a class with me before, you should know I have some pretty high standards around device use. You simply won't be welcome to scroll through your feed or play games while the lesson is active: you'll be expected to be an active contributor to the class. I promise there'll be interesting content to keep you engaged! And you'll promise not to make me have that boring conversation with your HBLA and parents about inappropriate device use :p
The Google Classroom course code for this class is diddm7b.