English is both a subject in its own right and a medium through which we access everything around us. We want to equip students  with the skills and knowledge to become confident thinkers, speakers and writers, armed with the proficiency to make sense of an increasingly complex and diverse world.

Our curriculum aims to challenge students to become critical thinkers, confident and proficient readers, writers and speakers. Through a diverse and engaging curriculum that reaches out to ambitious and diverse texts choices, we aim to broaden our students' exposure to the world beyond the classroom, so that we can make that vital impact in our students’ lives.  English has the transformative power to shape our students’ minds, helping them become articulate, confident and open-minded individuals. We believe that it is through English that we make sense of our own reality. It is a lever for social justice and challenges us to imagine how the future of our world might look if we reach beyond our own lived experience.

 

Whilst there are many great British authors and classic examples of English Literature in our curriculum, our journey starts in Key Stage 3, with the fundamental questions that shaped the paths of history being carefully curated and explored.

Our KS3 curriculum has been carefully sequenced to introduce students to a variety of literary genres and forms, including different writing forms, in order to equip them with the skills for success at KS4 and beyond. By exposing our students to powerful, multi-diverse texts, we challenge the established perspectives through the repositioning of marginalised voices, listening to the voice of the voiceless, challenging social norms and the accepted representations of the past. We step into gripping Elizabethan theatre and the destabilising colonial epoch that bore the first English novels; we explore subversion through the Gothic genre and consider morality and social justice through the lens of Crime fiction. We celebrate diverse stories and writers who help form our multicultural Britain. At KS4, we present literature as both a mirror in which students see themselves reflected and a window they peer through to learn about worlds beyond their own lived experience. Each writing topic intertwined with challenging texts to expose students to a range of text types from a range of different time periods.  Grounding our knowledge of 19th Century Britain and the Elizabethan era and moving into the study of 20th century texts, our curriculum seeks to build on our pupil’s understanding of the authors’ craft, eventually introducing our students to more challenging ideas and concepts.  

Retrieval activities are placed at the forefront of each lesson to allow students to reactivate prior knowledge. This is essential to allow for the deep thinking that follows as part of the acquisition of new factual and conceptual understanding of a topic. In order for our students to explain, explore and critically analyse key terms and concepts, teachers are encouraged to model their thought process when writing extended answers and provide students with modelled, worked examples to deconstruct. Challenging vocabulary is taught explicitly using the Frayer Model and students are encouraged to apply this in both their spoken and written work. Students are encouraged to fully participate in class discussion through the use of cold-calling and structured talk between peers. This is done with precision and accuracy and with the emphasis on students showcasing their grasp of the powerful knowledge they’re being exposed to. 

Students are assessed formatively though fortnightly whole-class, teacher feedback in their books, targeted questioning and regular knowledge ‘quizzes’ to enable teachers to identify gaps in knowledge to reteach. Students are also assessed through summative assessments once knowledge of each unit is secure. This takes shape in the form of Assessed Tasks which are marked and used to inform pupil performance alongside Midway and End of Year Tests.

For our KS3 and KS4 pupils, we use Sparx Reader as our homework portal and this has allowed us to set our high expectations and build healthy reading habits. Independent reading allows our students to develop a better understanding of narrative schemas and for them to build on their reading and writing successes by encouraging them self-efficacy in independent reading.

In addition to this, our KS4 students are also offered opportunities to attend after-school intervention which targets bespoke areas of concern at GCSE level and helps them with their independent revision.

Studying English can open up numerous career opportunities depending on how our pupils choose to apply skills accrued. Some pathways that our students explore include further study at A-Level and degree level in English Literature, Psychology, Sociology and Film Studies. English underpins any role and career, however some that are more specific to English may include: 

  • Publishing 
  • Writing 
  • Editing 
  • Teaching 
  • Law 
  • Human Resources 
  • Digital marketing and advertising
  • Translation and Interpretation