English

The curriculum increases in challenge as students progress throughout Key Stage 3 but key concepts and disciplines are frequently revisited.

At KS3, foci of teaching and assessment refer to HfL’s ‘APP’, such that there is a carefully plotted holistic journey through Key Stages 3-5.

In Year 7 students begin with the GL assessment in the first half term so that we can be more sure of their start points and compare with data provided of their levels at the end of Year 6. We use the reading strategies suggested by the GL Assessment package to promote progress in reading for our pupils.

Our curriculum is then organised thematically. Year 7 begin with a unit called ‘Transformations’ with a focus on how writers (including themselves) create stories with complex characters and settings and communicate ideas using ambitious and precise vocabulary. This is so that students master skills needed for their Journeys Travel Writing Assessment (Year 8), their Narrative Writing Assessment linked to the theme of Poverty, Protest and Respect in Year 9, and GCSE English Language Paper 1 Question 5. They complete a baseline writing assessment that should show knowledge of, and the ability to use complex sentences (demarcated accurately), fronted adverbials and figurative language, as well as a range of verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs; they should know the difference and be able to write in different 'persons'; they should use planning models to structure their work, which as a short story should have a beginning, middle and end and include some sort of crisis/obstacle. This focus on fiction then follows on to their first Reading Assessment on Deborah Ellis’ The Breadwinner.

Next in Year 7 students study A Midsummer Night’s Dream (the first of 2 Shakespeare texts at KS3, required by the National Curriculum, with the second being Romeo and Juliet in Year 9). The assessment is framed with them responding to a proposition, arguing to what extent they agree. This written essay response prepares them for GCSE English Literature exam questions and also links to the character analysis assessments they will do in Year 8 (study of a villain in detective fiction) and Year 9 (study of a female character in Americation literature). In finishing this text, pupils now have knowledge of how writers write non-fiction and how writers present their viewpoint (link to GCSE English Language Paper 2 Question 5).

The year finishes with examination of Myths and Legends from a range of times and cultures, with students exploring and forming meanings from them to apply to contemporary society.

Topics in Year 8 encourage exposure to further genres, and builds on the reading of fiction texts from the 21st and late 16th centuries, as well as Myths and Legends from across time, by now focusing on short stories in the detective genre from the 19th century. This helps them prepare for study of a 19th century novel (A Christmas Carol) for GCSE English Literature Paper 1, and for the non-fiction source from the 19th century in English Language Paper 2. The essay for this unit assesses knowledge about how writers construct villains (links to Heroes topic in Year 9) and appreciation of the writers’ craft (including structural choices). This links to GCSE English Language Paper 1 Question 3, the GCSE English Literature exams and also to Assessment Objective 2 for the A-Level in English Literature.

Alongside the study of how writers from literary heritage create compelling characters in the detective genre, pupils apply what they’ve learnt through a creative process, planning, drafting and writing their own detective fiction. They end the unit with a newspaper report (non-fiction) from the study of a satellite text (Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl). Students are taught about bias and how this is used when writing to present a view. This prepares students for GCSE English Language Paper 2 Question 5. This writing assessment maintains a focus on vocabulary and grammar in the successful communication of ideas, a focus first introduced in their first assessment of Year 7.

Next in Year 8 students study a mixture of poetry and travel writing around the theme of ‘Journeys.’ They are introduced to many poets that they will go on to study at GCSE, including Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Wordsworth. They are encouraged to explore multiple interpretations and meanings, considering the poets’ intent, and are taught new poetic terminology in preparation for a comparative essay, similar to the task asked of them for GCSE English Literature Paper 2. As well as this reading assessment, students also prepare for a writing assessment this term where they write both descriptively and to present a view, influenced by the work of multiple travel writers including Bill Bryson and Ernest Shackleton. This builds on skills and knowledge gained in Year 7 and links to both GCSE English Language Papers Writing sections.

They end the year with study of works of Dystopian Fiction, building a knowledge of this genre and considering their impact in contemporary society. They are encouraged to think creatively and explore possible future events as a result of current issues such as climate change and increase in surveillance and social media.

Topics and texts in Year 9 are selected to develop their knowledge of how writers, including themselves, can create psychologically complex characters, can evocatively describe settings, can develop themes, and can use structural devices to guide their reader; and how texts can reflect their place and time of production, such that students understand how attitudes and values have changed over time.

Year 9 begins with the unit ‘Poverty Protest and Respect’. Students study Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’, their first study of a whole text from the body of American Literature, including dialect / themes / race and gender; and so, the role of time and place of production in a text’s creation and how attitudes have changed over time. Students plan and write a GCSE English-style essay in response to a novel, and argue how far they agree with a proposition. This extends their experience of responding to literature and builds upon their essay planning and writing in Years 7 and 8. Students also study ‘satellite texts’ that complement their study of the core text, including examples of non-fiction featuring contemporary protest, and significant events and figures from the past who have protested and led to change - e.g. Martin Luther King / Robert Kennedy’s speech the night of King’s assassination etc. Alongside this, in fiction writing, students also study how writers plan and create deliberate internal contrast, characters who have psychological depth, and a complex narrative voice, using models of fiction writing from a range of diverse texts, including extracts such as from ‘The Flowers’ by Alice Walker. Students write their own fiction to describe and narrate in response to an image. How is what we are expecting of pupils different in this assessment, compared to the fiction writing they have done in years 7 and 8? This should be a much more complex, thoughtful piece of work as this marks their bridge to GCSE-style writing. It will be prompted by an image that links to the term topic of 'Poverty, Protest & Respect' and the context and themes of Of Mice and Men should inspire them: isolation, loneliness, futility of personal ambition, difference, love and loss, thwarted ambition etc. It should feature detailed characterisation and psychological depth, a complex narrative voice. More thought should be given to structure, perhaps with use of flashback, cyclical structure, cliff-hanger ending etc. Use of paragraphing should guide the reader. Motifs and symbolism may be used, as well as antithesis and judicious tone.

Students then study ‘Love and Relationships’, in which they study their second Shakespeare text at Key Stage 3, ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Students explore the themes of love and relationships, and track and trace how themes are developed across the play. Students are increasingly reading the whole play, and are challenged to develop a study record similar to that created by students at GCSE, and to arrive at an appreciation of Shakespeare’s craft.

Students are then asked to present a viewpoint in their own non-fiction writing in the style of GCSE English Language Paper 2 Question 5. They learn how writers use a range of rhetorical devices, and plan and sequence their material making judgements about how to manipulate their audience. Students are taught the conventions of speech writing, including speaking aloud to an audience. This prepares them for the Spoken Language Endorsement in Key Stage 4.

Students go on to study ‘Heroes’, which incorporates study of types of literary hero (including Byronic, Epic, Romantic and Tragic) and builds upon their appreciation of character types from the Villains studied in Year 8. This unit also explicitly links back to Shakespeare’s presentation of Romeo. The students prepare for the question formats in the GCSE English Language exams.

In Year 10, the students begin with ‘An Inspector Calls’ It is a rich and challenging text that encourages students to engage with concepts surrounding the early 20th Century. Students are introduced to the idea of forming critical responses on this text through different Assessment Objectives. By the end of October half term, students are able to display knowledge of content, form, structure and context linked to the text. They will complete a critical response on ‘An Inspector Calls’ in exam style conditions to assess understanding at this stage.

After October half term, students will complete interleaving tasks to help transfer their skills from the literature paper across to the language papers. These specific tasks are completed over a few lessons initially to help students adapt to the transition across the papers.

Following the interleaving tasks, the focus then shifts to Language paper 1. This is an AQA exam paper that can be broken into reading and writing sections. Lessons begin with a focus on the reading part of the paper whereby students are asked to examine an extract and to select and retrieve information, explore the uses of language by the writer, explore the uses of structure to create interest, and to apply evaluative viewpoints on the extract chosen. The students are taught through strategies suggested by Herts for Learning and adapted to suit the needs of our students of varying abilities. The skills for reading here become interchangeable with all of the other papers and continue to significantly enhance the level of answers required for the fnal exam papers. At this point, students begin preparing for the writing section of this paper. They are expected to learn the skills of planning, editing, crafting sentences, improving their creative writing ability. The lessons here aim to refer to and develop the skills of creative writing that the students have learned previously in key stage 3.

Towards the end of November, students move back to their second literature text ‘A Christmas Carol’. This is a suitable text to help challenge our most able students and equally provides an accessible storyline for our least able students. Students have already learned about the assessment objectives from earlier in the year and study similar types of content, form, structure, and context across a pre-1900s text. Students complete a critical response on ‘A Christmas Carol’ in exam style conditions to assess understanding at this stage.

In the second half of the year, students begin with more interleaving activities to again help with the transition from literature ‘A Christmas Carol’ to language. This allows students to further consolidate the significance of assessment objectives and how they can play a similar role across the papers.

Leading up to February half term, students move on to Language Paper 2 and are asked to deploy many skills learned from the previous language paper 1 earlier in the year. Students are tested with more content in this paper (across 2 extracts). Again, students begin with the reading section of the paper and are asked to consider how they summarise across 2 extracts, how the writer chooses to use language, and how the writer uses a variety of methods to provide different viewpoints. There are many interchangeable skills across the 2 language papers and the students begin to benefit from the similarity at this stage. Students soon move on to the writing section of this paper using materials and tasks guided through teacher knowledge and recommended tasks by Herts for Learning. The writing section of this paper asks students to demonstrate a viewpoint for themselves and to craft an answer that is both engaging and convincing. It is important that this writing section is taught and learned at this point in the year due to the ongoing development of students’ maturity with writing. They tend to have a significantly higher level of experience and content at this stage to enable them to demonstrate their strengths of writing.

In the latter half of this term, students study ‘Power and conflict’ poetry. The lessons are aimed towards identifying form, language, structure, context relating to a series of 15 poems in the poetry anthology. Students are given opportunities to dissect and analyse each poem and continue to build on skills learned from key stage 3, as well as early key stage 4. At this point of study, the poems require students to reflect more independently and to build their own methods of analysis where possible. This is the final preparation within Year 10 to prepare students for the next stage of learning and revision once they enter Year 11.

At the start of Year 11, students study ‘Macbeth’ to help fulfil the Shakespeare element of the GCSE Literature course. The text of ‘Macbeth’ is studied in the second year of their GCSE course due to the significant experience and somewhat development of students with language and literature skills learned from Year 10. This text is rich and challenging within our curriculum and is selected to help students’ display a variety of highly conceptualised answers as well as providing an engaging and relevant storyline with the cohort of students. Students are given the opportunity to once again focus on the content, language, form, structure, context relating to a text from the 17th Century. By the mid-way point of November half term, students will complete a critical response on the play ‘Macbeth’’ in exam style conditions to assess understanding at this stage.

Leading towards the end of the first term, students return to both language papers in advance of the trial exams. Lessons are aimed to provide an overview of key questions from both language papers as well as identify key errors for students at this point. The lessons use materials from past papers as well as exemplar answers in order to consolidate student understanding from Year 10 on both language papers.

In the second half of the term, students are firstly given opportunities to identify strengths and weaknesses from their trial exams. The lessons help to guide students to become aware of common errors or expectations of each question of the papers. At this point in the year, a medium term curriculum plan is set to ensure that all curriculum content is covered within a structured timeframe and that lessons help to guide students towards their maximum performance levels in the remaining weeks before the GCSE exams.

We have planned the A Level course so that students experience texts written over a range of centuries (C15th-C21st), a range of plays, poems, novels and short stories, and texts that can be appreciated across a range of genres, such as Gothic, Blood Revenge Tragedy, Fabliaux; and that incorporate texts from the literary canon, American Literature, as well as more contemporary feminist voices.

The study of A Level begins with an introduction to the world of the C19th through study of Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ (1818 edition) and incorporates knowledge of settings, the advances in science of the time, advances in understanding of psychology, changing ideas about the relationship between the individual and society, rights, responsibilities, duties, and the implications of these changes on individuals and society. This provides an entry point to A level study, and begins to embed the core disciplines of planning and writing a developing line of argument, close analysis of text/extracts, linking discussion to the contexts of production and reproduction, and integrating references to critical and other interpretations of texts (AO1, AO2, AO3 and AO5). This forms part of a wider study of The Gothic, which continues in Year 13 and is the focus of assessment in Paper 2. This study builds upon the foundations of language analysis, awareness of elements of genre, and poetry analysis laid in Key Stages 3 and 4.

Students also study Carol Anne Duffy’s ‘Feminine Gospels’ in the first term, which incorporates a focus on the core disciplines of planning and writing a developing line of argument (AO1), and developing a close analysis of text/extracts through close reading of language, form and structure (AO2). This is a ‘step up’ from GCSE and students are supported through modelling and formative feedback. Students study a range of poems from Duffy’s ‘Feminine Gospels’ and this study is assessed through NEA piece 1.

By the end of the first term, students are taught how to structure and write an essay to a standard expected of an A Level English Literature student. This includes the importance of planning a logical sequencing of points, judicious choice of evidence, identification of writer’s methods, and building a developed discussion that may include links to contexts. Students are taught how this logical planning allows them to begin their answer with a thesis.

In the second term, students study two C20th texts from American literature for NEA piece 2: Tennessee Williams’ play, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, and then Salinger’s novel,‘Catcher in the Rye’. Students choose a focus for their study through selection of a question from a range of ten or more, all of which have been agreed with the exam board, OCR. This study incorporates the key discipline of developing comparison (AO4) which is also a significant element of working in preparation for both of the A Level exams. The study builds on what students have learned in term 1 about the role of contexts in shaping meanings, and students are taught how to address AO3 in their topic sentences when AO3 is dominant / significant in the proportion of marks.

In term 2, students also study Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’, including preparation for a close reading (AO2) of an extract in preparation for part a) of Section 1 of Paper 1; and also including different interpretations of the play / perspectives towards the play, and how these have changed over time (AO5), in preparation for part b) of Section 1 of Paper 1. This is an extensive study as the students ‘zoom in’, preparing them for an unseen extract (AO2), and consider the wider cultural reception of the play (AO5). Students develop their close analytical writing in the Summer Term as they respond to extracts selected by the teacher. In Year 13, students continue their study of the play, with a focus moving towards the reception of the play and how this has changed over time, creating a further reading record that is used in planning part b) essays set by the teacher.

In Year 13, the students are engaged in increasingly synoptic study drawing from across their learning over the two-year taught course.

Students begin Year 13 by revisiting their study of the gothic, building upon the key concepts covered in Year 12 and extending these to include… Students are taught approaches to interpreting Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’, including how the genre has developed over the C19th (AO3), including specific comparison (AO4) to ‘Frankenstein’; Students then study Angela Carter’s ‘Bloody Chamber’, and how writing in the gothic genre has developed and changed in the later C20th context, including feminist perspectives now being reflected by the writer of the gothic. This also includes specific comparison (AO4) to both ‘Dracula’ and ‘Frankenstein’ (in preparation for Paper 2 Section 2).

Alongside their continued study of ‘Hamlet’, the students also study Webster’s revenge tragedy ‘Duchess of Malfi’, and Chaucer’s fabliau, ‘The Merchant’s Prologue and Tale, in preparation for Paper 1 Section 2. This study incorporates the ideas and conventions of blood revenge tragedy, its development from Senecan to Renaissance, and then more specifically Jacobean, and the emergence from a Medieval world of a merchant class, and how this challenged and changed the feudal order to transform ideas that we recognise were still in development in the C19th (students have been engaging with these ideas through their study of the gothic). The key skill of comparison (AO4) is revisited with a different format of the exam, including a choice of six questions.