Curriculum Aims

By offering students opportunities to engage with challenging texts across the breadth and depth of genres, cultures and contexts, we enable students to develop personally, emotionally and socially, through a shared understanding of the human experience. Studies in English have a wide-reaching impact, highlighting the importance of cross-curricular connections to ensure students recognise the power of language. We want students to become critical, analytical and insightful readers. We teach them to develop and express their personal voice and ultimately leave school with the tools for continued success.

Key Stage 3 Curriculum Overview

Our Key Stage Three curriculum follows the National Curriculum and, as such, our aim is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment.

We ensure that all pupils:

• read easily, fluently and with good understanding

• develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information

• acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language

• appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage

• write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences

• use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas

• are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate

Half-termly Units:

Year 7: The History of English; Shakespeare’s Richard III; Greek Mythology; An Introduction to Charles Dickens; Fiction – The Girl of Ink and Stars; Writing Skills – The Island Project

Year 8: Fiction – The Magpie; Gothic fiction; Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet; Poetry from Different Cultures; Rhetoric and the art of persuasion; An Introduction to Film Studies.

Year 9: Play – Blood Brothers; Genre Study – Detective Fiction and The Sign of the Four; Women Who Changed the World; Relationships Poetry; Dystopian Fiction – Divergent; Media Representations

Key Stage 4

Course: English Language

Exam Board: AQA

Final Assessment: Two examinations: Paper 1 – Explorations in Creative Reading and Writing, 1 hour 45 minutes; Paper 2 – Writers’ Viewpoints and Perspectives, 1 hour 45 minutes.

Curriculum Overview

Students will draw upon a range of texts as reading stimulus and engage with creative as well as real and relevant contexts. Students will have opportunities to develop higher-order reading and critical thinking skills that encourage genuine enquiry into different topics and themes.

GCSE English Language is designed on the basis that students should read and be assessed on high-quality, challenging texts from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. The texts, across a range of genres and types, support students in developing their own writing by providing effective models. The texts include literature and extended literary non-fiction, and other writing such as essays, reviews and journalism (both printed and online).

Course: English Literature

Exam Board: AQA

Final Assessment: Two examinations: Paper 1 – Shakespeare and the 19th-century novel, 1 hour 45 minutes; Paper 2 – Modern Texts and Poetry – 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Curriculum Overview

Across their English Literature GCSE, students study three texts in depth: Shakespeare’s Macbeth, J B Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Students are guided through the reading and annotation of the texts, considering the wider context and themes of each text and author. They also study a collection of poetry titled ‘Power and Conflict’, which explores a range of poets and key ideas through poems, such as Wilfred Owen’s Exposure and Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Their knowledge and skills with poetry are consolidated through their exploration of unseen poetry, and making connections between poems based on key themes and ideas.