Curriculum

English

What we are trying to achieve with students

We are seeking to encourage wide reading and an enjoyment of literature. We aim to ensure that our students understand an author’s purpose and can analyse the content and techniques used, with writing skills being modeled, practiced and developed across the key stages.

It is important that students gain the skills to write in a number of different styles, for example, expansively or discursively, with technical accuracy and are also able to recognize the different genre requirements that each style contains.

Oral work is used to improve students’ confidence in speaking effectively and to develop their listening skills, so that they can make appropriate responses to what they have heard.

The course we run

In Years 7-9 work is based around the National Literacy Strategy. It is centred upon literature and increasingly develops structure and an analytical approach. Developing writing skills and styles is an important focus of study.

In Years 10-11, the AQA GCSE dual certification course is followed. Literature is at its core and it includes a pre-1914 novel, a drama test, a Shakespeare play, together with a study of poetry. There is also a language focus including media and original writing units.

In the Sixth Form the GCE AS and A level courses offered by the AQA are taught. Students study 700 years of literature, mainly British and American. Students are required to complete coursework in addition to final examinations in the summer.

Items of particular interest

English Faculty staff continually seek to challenge and improve both the range of experience available to our students and their levels of performance. Results at Key Stage 3, GCSE and AS/A level all continue to improve markedly, so that some, for example, higher grades in English Literature have more than doubled in number over the last 5 years.

Students go on visits to theatres in all key stages, and specialist seminars with outside speakers are arranged for the Sixth Form groups. We have also encouraged visiting authors such as Darren Shan, Alan Gibbons and Gillian Cross to run school workshops for Key Stage 3 students.

All students in Year 7 enter poetry competitions and the resulting work is published in a collected work. Students are also encouraged to read a range of literature through Reading Passport scheme that rewards those who complete its various sections. Reading is further encouraged through the Book Club, which allows students to acquire books of their own.