Taylor Swift Meets the Year 8 Classroom

The final task for the Year 8 English classes required students to draw on all their skills from the year, combining textual analysis, persuasive language, public speaking skills and multimodal presentations to answer the following question:

‘Which is the best Taylor Swift Bridge of all time?’

Swift, a renowned lyricist, is known for her love of an impactful and powerful bridge. Students were tasked with identifying, analysing, and persuading their peers as to which, in their opinion, was the best of the best and why.

The format of these presentations was up to the students, but they had to analyse the following for their chosen bridge:

  • Part One: The use of emotive, figurative and descriptive language and narrative arch.
  • Part Two: Audience Impact. What does it make an audience think and/or feel? What is the cultural impact that this bridge has had?
  • Part Three: Performance quality and engagement.

While this task was unweighted and created as a fun and engaging completion to the school year, it required the students to return to the skills and content we have covered throughout the year in English, tying to our overall teaching and learning focus of deep learning and connecting learning to life. Students often ask, ‘How is English relevant to the real world?’ and this was a creative and engaging way for students to see how they might utilise the skills they learn in English in everyday life.

Kelsi Davis, English Teacher, shared, “Some of the highlights of this task have been, first and foremost, seeing the level of detail and commitment the students dedicated to this! I have seen props, costumes, dances, performances, persuasive speeches, role plays and ‘special guests’, carefully curated and edited videos, original poetry and creative hashtags #smallestmanbiggestbridge and a healthy dose of critiquing their Taylor Swift-obsessed teacher.”

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