As we head towards the start of Term One in Victoria, many of you will be teaching VCE English for the first time. An increasing number may also be teaching it out of field, drafted in from the humanities or other subjects to fill gaps in schools. With a study design that’s only one year old for Year 11, and brand new for Year 12, that can seem pretty daunting.
Over the last 18 months, I’ve produced a lot of resources to help VCE English teachers understand the new study design. In this post, I’m going to collate those, plus take a look at the sample examination that was published late last year. The post is organised into sections for Year 11 and 12, so just jump in wherever you find most useful.
Preparing for Year 11
Here are the resources for Unit 1 and 2, and specific posts about the various outcomes. You might notice that Unit 2 Area of Study 1 is missing: it’s the same-old analytical response unit as the previous study design to a large extent, so I didn’t cover it in detail. The Unit 3/4 resources for Reading and Responding to text cover most of the same Key Knowledge and Skills.
Unit 1 and 2: General posts
Unit 1 Area of Study 1: Reading and Exploring Texts (Personal Response)
You will most likely start with the personal response task, although you do have some wiggle room with the organisation of the units, and you don’t necessarily have to teach them in order.
Starting with the personal response task is generally a good idea as it provides an easy way to introduce the analytical skills of later units, including the reading and exploring texts analytical response in Unit Two, and the analytical essays in Units Three, Four, and Section A of the exam.
Because this was one of the new sections of the VCE study design, and we had never seen a personal response before, I put together quite a few articles explaining different aspects. I think one key point of this area of study is not to skip it or gloss it in favour of more important outcomes because students will get a lot of value from the skills of the personal response that they will also be able to transfer into crafting and creating texts in later units.
Unit 1 Area of Study 2: Crafting Texts
Unit 2 Area of Study 2: Exploring Argument
VCE Hub
Visit the VCE Hub for Professional Learning and resources for VCE English and EAL 2024 – the Hub is continuously updated and contains hours of videos, PDF and powerpoint presentations, and resources for planning the entire Unit 1-4 sequence.
Unit 3 and 4 Resources
The new 2024 Units 3 and 4 overlap a lot with the Year 11 curriculum, just as they did in the previous Study Design. In fact, now that English and EAL have been streamlined, there’s even more overlap.
Although much of Unit Three and Four replicates Unit One and Two, there are some subtle differences in the key knowledge and skills which are worth paying attention to. I wrote much more about Units One and Two in preparation for the new study design, assuming that most of you teaching Year 12 this year would have gone through that first year of the new study design with your Year 11 students.
For those of you that didn’t, or those who are interested in the differences between units one, two, and three, four, or if you just need a refresher, here are the articles that I’ve written about the New Year 12 areas of study all of the resources in one go.
The Examination
The post written here was published prior to the Sample Exam being released on the vCAA website, though the information came from the VCAA at the VATE conference and was accurate when the exam was actually published.
You should of course go and download a copy of the sample examination and use it with your students to prepare them for the end of the year. If you have the Insight Year 12 text book, we have also updated the supplementary digital materials with an extra chapter about the sample exam.
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