English

	Term 1	Term 2	Term 3	Term 4	Term 5
Year 7	Autobiography ‘My Family and Other Animals’: this module will begin the new year by bringing all students to the same core skills required for the secondary setting, particularly spelling, punctuation, grammar, and PETER paragraph analysis skills. By covering autobiographical writing, they will acknowledge the importance of personal voice and authorial craft. Students will also have opportunities to learn about their new classmates at the same time, through the sharing of anecdotes and personal stories in the style of Gerald Durrell’s ‘My Family and Other Animals’. Studying chapters this autobiography will introduce them to some challenging language features and grammatical structures, encouraging them to utilise a wider range of figurative devices and increasingly sophisticated choices in their own writing.	Non-Fiction - Persuasive Speeches This study will enable students to develop their ability to express their thoughts and perspectives in a clear and compelling manner. It will provide a variety of opportunities for students to examine how people have used rhetorical skills to persuade others since the time of Aristotle. Students will consider the effects of the persuasive devices used and how they might affect a reader or listener. Pupils will learn how to think critically to generate ideas and perspectives on issues relevant to society today. Pupils will learn how to organise and structure their opinions deliberately to influence the views of their audience. Alongside this focus, students will continue to study chapters of Gerald Durrell’s ‘My Family and Other Animals’, challenging their reading and comprehension skills and building on learning covered in Term 1.	Poetry This term the students will be studying ballad poetry. Within the module the intention is to make the link between the kinds of poetry they are likely to have studied at primary school e.g., haikus/ acrostic poems and shape poems and, from that position, develop their understanding of form, structure, rhythm, rhyme, rhyme schemes and poetic techniques. The ballad form will be accessible to students as it is a narrative form of poetry with commonly understood and identifiable features. They will consider the history of the ballad through its traditional, broadscript and lyrical forms. The study of 19^th century narrative ballads such as Tennyson’s ‘Lady of Shalott’ will challenge the students and introduce them to sophisticated vocabulary and comprehension skills. Students will also begin to analyse and infer subtle effects such as atmosphere from a text.	The Roots of English This module will introduce the students to the English language through a new lens; they will gain an appreciation for the way in which language has changed over time and will understand the origins of the words we speak today. Pupils will study historic events such as the Norman invasion and the invention of Caxton’s printing press to acknowledge how these important moments in time contributed to the shifting nature of our language. They will consider vital texts such as Beowulf and Chaucer’s ‘The Canterbury Tales’ before travelling to the modern day and noting their own colloquialisms and features of current dialect.	The Novel Students will be provided with a wide range of learning opportunities through their study of ‘Animal Farm’. They will analyse rhetorical and persuasive devices and consider the power of peer pressure, propaganda and the media. This will enable them to identify issues relevant to their own society today, such as fake news and the influence of social media. Pupils will think critically about a canonical literary text that is accessible in form as well as appropriately challenging in its themes and ideas, covering a wide range of areas of debate such as slavery, power, animal abuse, equality, and community. ‘Animal Farm’ will bring pupils to acknowledge complex political systems and historical events through their study of totalitarianism, dictatorships, capitalism, communism, and the Russian Revolution. Throughout this module students will develop a range of abilities from analytical writing, as they study and explore Orwell’s authorial choices, to debate and speaking and listening skills, to creative writing and drama.
Year 8	Macbeth At GCSE students are required to study one of Shakespeare’s plays. Studying ‘Macbeth’ in Year 8 introduces the students to Shakespeare and sets the foundation for their awareness of Elizabethan contexts, an appreciation for the play form and its conventions, and encourages the early confidence required to engage with complex and unfamiliar language. Pupils will be able to access the play across a variety of creative, dramatic and analytical learning opportunities. Studying ‘Macbeth’ also grants students the chance to appreciate an important text in the literary canon.		Media and Non-Fiction The media is a powerful force within society today and as such young people need to learn how it can affect people in the world they live in both positively and negatively. They need to be empowered to recognise the use of rhetoric in action so that they are equipped to evaluate the validity of what they read. Students will learn how language is used in the media to present the views and opinions of different groups within society. They will learn that language can be used to powerfully influence the ideas and perspectives of readers. They will learn to identify the features of rhetoric within editorial and opinion articles in the media today and to explain how such devices are deliberately used to sway the views of the reader. They will use rhetorical devices themselves to present their own opinions on a topic of their choice.	Poetry Poets have a wealth of forms with which to express themselves from narrative, epic, sonnets, lyric poems, and ballads. In this unit students will see how a variety of poets have utilised the constraints of form to express their ideas and perspectives. They will be encouraged to explore how poets present meaning and affect a reader through language, structure, and poetic devices. Students will also develop comparison skills by considering how poems are similar or varied in features and style. Additionally, pupils will begin to show an awareness for context and social themes, acknowledging how these can influence a poet and poem. In their analysis of these topics, pupils will develop their abilities to write accurately, fluently and with clarity, using discourse markers and embedded references.	The Novel At GCSE student are required to understand and interpret the meanings of both fiction and non-fiction from the nineteenth century. Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens, has been introduced as a means of aiding the development of students’ ability to decode language from the nineteenth century with unfamiliar syntax, longer sentence structures and archaic vocabulary. It is providing the opportunity for students to develop their understanding of narrative techniques and how writers use these to convey meanings perspectives and attitudes pertinent to the historical period in which they were writing. Students will learn that understanding of the context of production is essential for them to interpret the implied meanings of a text. Students will also learn about literature from the literary canon and the place of the literary canon as part of British cultural heritage.
Year 9	The Modern Play text – Educating Rita and Unseen Poetry This term students will explore a classic modern play text and acquire the skills to create an argument, analyse language and apply context. Within the text itself are examples of some of the best poetry English has to offer, and their ability to read, interpret and respond imaginatively to poems they have not seen before will be developed thoroughly. Knowledge of more sophisticated forms and techniques will be learned alongside the expansion of the student’s repertoire of poets studied. With strong links to Drama, students will also develop their dramatic and speaking and listening skills.		Reading and Writing Non-Fiction An essential part of success in English is that of being a rigorous reader. In this unit students will be encountering several texts from a range of sources that will help them develop as a critical reader. Texts from the past and present will be compared and the ideas within them challenged and commented upon. Students will develop their ability to respond critically to ideas and perspectives from Non-Fiction. They will also develop their decoding skills for 19^th century non-fiction and comment and utilise an increasingly sophisticated range of rhetorical techniques in their analysis and writing.		Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet Preparing for GCSE study skills and knowledge. Through the study of Shakespeare’s most famous play students will sharpen the skills learned at the start of the year and apply them to a GCSE text. They will develop analytical and interpretive skills and broaden the range of authorial techniques they can comment on and use within their own writing. This early exploration of the play will necessitate the production of neat, well-ordered revision notes, modelling the skills required for GCSE study.

Links to Schemes of Learning documents will be added as relevant throughout the year. Project titles may be subject to change.