English

English Subject Overview

The English Department aims to equip our pupils with the knowledge and confidence they need to be successful in our subject.

We offer a broad range of texts in a knowledge-rich curriculum whilst challenging pupils’ ideas to develop them further as curious learners and critical thinkers.

In studying English, pupils develop skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing that can also be transferred to their other subjects. Pupils learn to express their ideas creatively whilst learning to communicate with others effectively. Our curriculum ensures that pupils study suitably challenging texts from year 7, building on their knowledge from Key Stage 2. It is our intent to ensure that all pupils are prepared for the next stage of their education whilst building their confidence in all areas of English study. Pupils will learn valuable transferable skills such as communication, critical thinking and writing for purpose.

Our key aims in English is for curious, conscientious and resilient learners to develop key knowledge and skills.

In English, we do this by:

Ensuring a smooth transition between Key Stages for progression of learning;
Setting challenging texts and topics with high expectations of all pupils;
Offering a variety of teaching and learning approaches to engage and motivate pupils of all abilities;
Providing a varied curriculum containing the core skills for success in English

Our Accelerated Reader programme encourages pupils to develop crucial reading skills which in turn enhance pupils’ writing skills.

We provide opportunities for enrichment such as visits to the theatre and a variety of writing competitions to take part in.

The analysis of texts is an integral part of our English curriculum and is therefore a prominent feature of the curriculum offered in each year group. As pupils progress from KS3 to KS4, the difficulty of the texts they encounter increases along with the expected level of analysis.

There are ‘Golden Threads’ of analysis that run through our curriculum in English:

Year 7: Identify and comment on
Year 8: Explore
Year 9: Examine and analyse
Year 10: Thoroughly examine and analyse
Year 11: Perceptively examine and analyse with evaluation

Essentially pupils are analysing in every year throughout the curriculum covering reading, writing and spoken skills, but they are consistently retrieving prior knowledge and building new skills as they do so. Each year there is an interleaving of skills to ensure that expertise is consistently revisited and embedded to then build further knowledge upon.

Our learning and teaching sequence in English is:

Recall prior learning
Shared reading of a text, with a focus on a particular skill
Analysis of features and effects (language and structure)
I do modelling
We do guided writing
You do independent writing and consolidation of knowledge and skills

It is important to note that this approach to our golden threads has flexibility and is led by pupil abilities and needs as well as our expectations of pupils. Teachers are required to use adaptive learning methods to ensure the appropriate level of analysis matches pupils’ abilities.