Intent
Within the English department, we explore a rich cultural history of literature, focusing in on the range of cultures and societies both historically and from a contemporary perspective. We aim to encourage all students to understand how society shapes a text, and how social changes encourage us to respond to a text and its message.
We constantly encourage our students to debate and investigate the role of writers, and we inspire in them a thirst of knowledge for reading, writing and oracy that will prompt them to find their ‘voice’ and have the language they need to express themselves both during their education and beyond.
Our spiral curriculum is designed to continually revisit and build on the fundamental skills of reading, writing and oracy to ensure mastery within and between key stages. Pupils begin each year with a focus on the fundamental skills of reading and writing appropriate to the year group before moving through their interleaved Literature and Language units. The placement of each unit allows for pupils to link prior knowledge or exercise previously mastered skill.
As each year progresses, the students will examine different perspectives and opinions from various writers and eras, with a focus on the themes of: conflict, power and relationships, and how each of these can influence the construction of your identity. The various literature and non-fiction texts that inform our knowledge rich curriculum, allow students to be curious readers, with a desire to explore the issues that are ‘beyond’ the text, with a strong focus on how the text is relevant to their own lives: how the texts reflect their lives; how the text challenges their understanding of issues relating to gender, sexuality, religion, other cultures.
We feel a student's cultural capital experience links directly to the literature they study and read, and their extended understanding of the world around them.
Through reading a range of texts across both historical and contemporary writers, including writers from other cultures and writers who are often not represented, we hope that we will be offering students a more complex understanding of the world we live in.
The department is committed to sharing a more diverse range of writers and views across all key stages. At GCSE, only 1% of students are currently reading novels written by people of colour. We are now a Literature in Colour pioneer school, and we are committed to teaching Literature texts from contemporary writers. We are currently teaching Boy Don’t Cry, by Malorie Blackman, to all Year 9 students. We have also opted to teach the Belonging poetry anthology at GCSE; an anthology of poetry that examines identity and culture, written by a much more diverse range of poets than has been previously seen in exam specifications.
In addition, as a Literature in Colour pioneer school, we have been sent 300 additional fiction, non-fiction and poetry books for students to read. The authors span a range of diverse cultures. These books are available for all students to access, and every English classroom has a set of books for students to read.
The curriculum celebrates the power of the subject of English and the vital role it plays in preparing students for the different pathways they may take. Through the curriculum, pupils develop a range of vital skills, for example, the ability to analyse sophisticated ideas, how to synthesise complex information, how to construct a convincing argument, and how to be an effective speaker and writer.