English Key Information
‘Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass’
‘Books are uniquely portable magic’
‘A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies’
English department aims and ethos:
The English department enhance students’ lives in the study of English Language and literature by fulfilling the St Joseph’s Mission statement; Living, loving, learning through Christ and promoting the Jesuit Pupil Profile virtues. We strive to make learning fun, inspire a love of reading and a thirst for knowledge in our students, developing them as independent and enquiring learners. In order to achieve our aim, we endeavour to:
- Ensure all students make outstanding progress, regardless of their starting point.
- Ensure all English lessons include relevant challenge, pupil engagement and a focus on celebrating success.
- Provide all students with the opportunity to study a wide range of engaging fiction and non-fiction texts to help develop insightful and perceptive readers.
- Promote independent reading time and develop a love of reading with all students to encourage them to read for pleasure and become lifelong ‘readers’.
- Provide students opportunities to participate in a wide range of learning experiences, developing them as effective communicators and active learners.
- Help all students develop into creative, analytical and independent thinkers.
- Encourage all pupils to develop skills to enable them to write, read and speak Standard English fluently and accurately.
- Enable all students to develop effective writing skills so that pupils can express themselves precisely and fluently in a range of forms, for different purposes and audiences, communicating meaning and developing ideas effectively and controlling grammar and structure appropriately.
- Provide a supportive, engaging and challenging learning environment to help students achieve their very best.
- Provide students with opportunities to develop Oracy skills and develop their confidence when taking part in public speaking.
- Prepare students for the world of Higher Education and work by guiding them to successful assessment at GCSE and raising their aspirations.
Meet the English department:
Mrs A Fillingham – Associate Assistant Head/Director of English
Mrs G Ward – KS3 Co-Ordinator and 2nd in dept
Mrs M Kim – English teacher with whole school responsibility for oracy
Ms C Doherty – English teacher with whole school responsibility for literacy and reading
Mrs E Steel – English teacher
Miss C Fisher – English teacher
Mrs A Mitchell – English TA and Reading support
KS4 Curriculum
At KS4, all students study the AQA English Language and English Literature GCSE courses.
KS3 curriculum:
Skills the students will develop:
Future careers and vocations:
- Lots of students move on to study A Level English Language and/or English Literature, some students then procced to degree courses.
- In terms of careers, English opens many doors for students and GCSE English Language and Literature are both highly valued in many fields, including:
Teaching, journalism, law, politics, publishing and media, marketing and HR.
Contacts:
Enrichment
Our English enrichment booklets provide our students with a wide range of texts and media resources relating to the topic they learn in curriculum time. Our choice of enrichment resources exposes students to different styles of writing and information that we don’t cover in lessons which will enable students to further develop their knowledge about the topic and challenge their thoughts and ideas.
Year 7
Autumn Term Enrichment Booklet
Spring Term Enrichment Booklet
Year 8
Autumn Term Enrichment Booklet
Year 9:
Competitions
- KS3 Christmas creative writing competition
- Rotary ‘Young Writer’s’ competition
- ‘Above and Beyond’ KS3 competition for students who are going above and beyond the learning in the classroom.
Extra-Curricular Clubs
- Reading club ‘Cakes and Classics’
- Reading support club.
Reading
Reading for pleasure
- Weekly reading lesson
- Reading lists shared in the enrichment booklets
Academic Reading:
- There is an enrichment booklet with academic reading dedicated to each year group.
Resources
Websites
Multimedia:
- There are links on ‘stream’ for film adaptation of all of the KS4 literature texts students’ study.
- At KS3, there are links to film versions of the two Shakespeare plays, the Hunger Games which Yr8 students’ study and there is the audio version of the Yr9 text ‘A Long Way Down’
