With all content taught, the class have spent the past few weeks reflecting on their Trial exams and using the feedback from their teachers to practice and revise their Modules. Module C: The Craft of Writing focusses on helping students to develop their writing skills imaginatively, persuasively, and discursively.

Recently, the class took part in a mini creative writing workshop titled ‘Lucky Dip Writing’. Students selected a stimulus for their imaginative writing from a ‘Lucky Dip’ box and then were supported by a set of prompts to produce an original draft narrative to develop heading into their HSC. Each prompt required the students to write for 6 minutes at a time and include techniques like personification, metaphors, flashbacks, and dialogue. After writing, the students shared their work as a way of affirming their skills in a safe and supportive environment.

The work they produced was exceptional. The students can now continue to edit and refine their pieces in the lead up to their exams. Included below are two samples of writing from Harrison Braeme and Lucas Hautrive. Please congratulate the boys, and the entire class, in their dedication to their English Studies.

Harrison Braeme:  ‘Lucky Dip’ stimulus was a pebble.

A recollection of days begun, sunrays burn through viscous layers of cloud, like an ember through paper; distant and shielding. The rain has long since passed and all that remains is the thickened stench of warm tar and petrichor rising through the air, a spreading collection of crackling neurons. Overhead powerlines purr with static, their potential a deep murmur filling the damp street. The afternoon sun offers little warmth, barely fending off the gnashing jaws of the thinning breeze.

A cloudy quartz pebble lies amongst grainy soils, chasing elusive ignorance. Throughout the sands echoes the remnants of camaraderie, clutching the pebble with an incorruptible spirit; a spirit eclipsed by panic and grandeur. A pebble, unmoved, by the million masks of God.

The hiss of the wind hurls grains of sand across its exposed surface. Slowly carving towards its core, sanding down anticipation and regard, leaving nought but a bare layer of lament. Late beads of long passed rain burrow unto the manifest.

Lucas Hautrive:  ‘Lucky Dip’ stimulus was a bookmark

The vehicle had become unresponsive, clanks in the engine send cold stabs through Chris and his father’s spine. The tires of the family car screech. The cargo of an open carriage truck thuds and rattles against the cold layer of tar covering the road. Time stops. A bookmark is now to be forever rested in time for Chris’ life.

Natasha sits by the window, waiting for her dad and stepbrother to arrive. She is yet to meet them. The heavy clouds close in like a marching army storming the front line. She’s anxious, nervous, scared. What will her dad think of her? What will he say? 14 years apart is enough to riddle her with doubts. What will he think of the tattoos and what will he say about the pink hair she thinks? Small pockets of light escaping through cracks in the clouds dissolve as the time increases.