English

Our aim in the English department is to build and develop strong skills, broad knowledge and understanding that will enable students to not only access GCSE content but create a love and enjoyment for the subject. In turn, we help them prepare for adult life and their future career and life goals.

We seek to enable students to demonstrate their dedication to excellence by becoming enthusiastic readers who access a wide range of texts, and accomplished writers and orators with an excellent knowledge of both English language and English literature. We endeavour to foster a love of word play, exploration of texts across all genres and forms and to investigate the world of non-fiction writing.

Our developing key stage 3 schemes of work aim to further develop students’ knowledge of grammar, understanding language and analysis of texts. We are incorporating a broad variety of texts to expand their cultural capital.

The main aspects of our key stage 3 curriculum reflect the requirements of the national curriculum in giving students the opportunities to learn about reading for meaning; writing for a range of purposes and audiences; having technical accuracy and making imaginative use of grammar and punctuation, and having an effective and commanding grasp of spoken English. We offer a range of enrichment activities throughout key stage 3 which support the subject including: book club, theatre trips, educational visits, workshops, enrichment days, live broadcasts, and creative writing club.

Year 7

Topics of study

Myths and legends
Novel – Animal Farm
War and conflict
Poetry from different cultures
History of rhetoric (part 1)
Shakespeare shake-up

By the end of year 7 students should be able to:

plan a literary response with teacher modelling and assistance;
understand how to identify and underline key parts of a text for a given topic or question. You should be starting to label devices and annotate connotations of language;
identify quotations with some assistance from the teacher on page numbers/key sections;
write paragraphs in timed conditions;
know and identify language and structural devices;
identify the three sentence types: simple, compound, complex;
identify grammatical features and effects;
plan and write a narrative/description based on a picture, theme, or title, using your own ideas;
come up with opinions on current issues and debate topics and discuss them;
write in a variety of forms: letter, personal account or diary entry, newspaper or magazine article, brochure or leaflet, speech, description or narrative;
write for a variety of purposes: to entertain, describe, inform, explain, persuade, advise and argue;
know and understand the rules for all punctuation: commas to separate clauses, full stops, speech punctuation, inverted commas, brackets, capital letters, exclamation marks and question marks, semi-colons, colons, dashes;
know and understand the rules for a range of sentence structures, including complex sentences with a variety of sentence starters and sentence fragments for effect/purpose;
know a range of vocabulary that you can use for a variety of purposes;
understand how a paragraph is structured, when to change paragraph and how to sequence ideas using discourse markers/connectives;
tailor the structure and vocabulary of talk to clarify ideas and guide the listener use some verbal and non-verbal techniques to make talk interesting for listeners;
take different roles in group discussion as required by the task or context; and
work on their own and with others to develop dramatic processes, narratives, performances or roles.

Year 8

Topics of study

Novel – Touching The Void/Lord Of The Flies/Jekyll And Hyde/The Edge
Survival
Much Ado About Nothing
Love and relationship poetry
Adventure and mystery
History of rhetoric (part 2) – text types

By the end of year 8 students should be able to:

annotate an extract, identifying techniques and annotating hidden meaning/effects;
identify quotations independently in extracts and with some guidance on sections of a whole text;
write an essay in timed conditions without teacher intervention;
have practiced writing essays based on extracts and whole text questions;
know and can identify a range of language and structural devices;
know a range of sentence structures and explain their particular uses and effects;
make comparisons between writer’s ideas and perspectives;
have started to compare poems with teacher support;
know a range of grammatical features and how they shape meaning;
plan and write a narrative/description based on a picture, theme or title, using your own ideas;
come up with opinions on current issues and debate topics, and discuss them;
write in a variety of forms: letter, personal account or diary entry, newspaper or magazine article, brochure or leaflet, speech, description or narrative;
write for a variety of purposes: to entertain, describe, inform, explain, persuade, advise and argue;
know and understand the rules for all punctuation: commas to separate clauses, full stops, speech punctuation, inverted commas, brackets, capital letters, exclamation marks and question marks, semi-colons, colons, dashes;
know and understand the rules for a range of sentence structures, including complex sentences with a variety of sentence starters and sentence fragments for effect/purpose;
know a range of vocabulary that you can use for a variety of purposes;
understand how a paragraph is structured, when to change paragraph and how to sequence ideas using discourse markers/connectives;
select the most appropriate way to structure speech for clarity and effect, taking into account task, audience, purpose and context, and the range of supporting resources available;
engage listeners’ attention and interest by using a range of different verbal and non-verbal techniques;
develop the skills required for group discussion by taking a variety of designated roles including acting as spokesperson for the group by reporting the main strands of thought or decisions; and
clearly sustain processes, narratives, performances and roles through the use of a variety of dramatic conventions, techniques and styles.

Year 9

Topics of study

Face (The Play)
Fight for Freedom
Novel – Of Mice and Men
Gothic Horror/19th Century texts
Heritage poetry – GCSE power and conflict cluster
Macbeth – GCSE Shakespeare play

By the end of year 9 students should be able to:

plan a literary response with teacher modelling and assistance;
understand how to identify and underline key parts of a text for a given topic or question. You should be starting to label devices and annotate connotations of language;
identify quotations with some assistance from the teacher on page numbers/key sections;
know and be able to identify language and structural devices;
identify the three sentence types: simple, compound, complex;
identify grammatical features and effects;
plan and write a narrative/description based on a picture, theme or title, using your own ideas;
come up with your own opinions on current issues and debate topics, and discuss them;
write in a variety of forms: letter, personal account or diary entry, newspaper or magazine article, brochure or leaflet, speech, description or narrative;
write for a variety of purposes: to entertain, describe, inform, explain, persuade, advise and argue;
know and understand the rules for all punctuation: commas to separate clauses, full stops, speech punctuation, inverted commas, brackets, capital letters, exclamation marks and question marks, semi-colons, colons, dashes;
know and understand the rules for a range of sentence structures, including complex sentences with a variety of sentence starters and sentence fragments for effect/purpose;
know a range of vocabulary that you can use for a variety of purposes.
understand how a paragraph is structured, when to change paragraph and how to sequence ideas using discourse markers/connectives;
select from a repertoire of resources and ways of organising and structuring talk to present information appropriately and persuasively for listeners in a range of familiar and unfamiliar contexts;
engage listeners’ attention effectively from a repertoire of verbal and non-verbal techniques which actively involve listeners;
choose appropriately from a wide variety of roles and apply the skills they require to plan, organise or sustain a range of different discussions; and
tailor a variety of processes, narratives, performances and roles through the selection and adaptation of appropriate dramatic conventions, techniques, and styles.