‘Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow’
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Our aim is to ensure that English is challenging and enjoyable at all key stages. We are aware of the KS2 entitlement and have built on these experiences as they move into KS3. It is important that students are able to develop a sense of perception and also personal opinion. Creativity and autonomy are also fundamental skills that we would like our students to nurture through their love of learning in order to write coherently, accurately and analytically. We aim to inspire a love of English and an appreciation of its importance.
-Writing
-encourage creativity and autonomy that we would like our students to nurture through their love of learning in order to write coherently, accurately and analytically
-ensure that that students are encouraged to write texts of varying length that suits different purpose and audience
-ensure that our students have the confidence to face challenges that they encounter and have high aspirations. They need to understand the relevance to what they are doing and be able to adapt the skills learnt in other contexts
-Reading
-ensure that students are encouraged to deepen and widen their learning by reading often from a varied literary heritage, range of texts and opportunities
-use opportunities within the subject to think about different perspectives and to make the links to relevant context within modern society
-Speaking and Listening
-give students the language of learning that will enable them to communicate effectively through developing a wider vocabulary to support them in the demands of the modern world
-encourage our students to speak with confidence and fluency that supports exploratory talk.
KS3 is planned with the intention of skills being taught that will support students when they reach KS4 and beyond. We are aware that comparative skills are important to our students as it is a skill that is highlighted as a development point when the students answer these questions in the KS4 exams. This has already been implemented within our KS3 SOW and is introduced to year 7.
We recognise the importance of repetition of skills within topics that will ultimately support the much needed skill of long term memory recall. Additionally, the use of reflection time and the evaluation process will support with building meta-cognition skills and improving overall performance.
Cyclic assessment and monitoring will continue to be embedded within our curriculum; effective feedback to drive student progress will still be a key part of our delivery. Oracy opportunities and developing speaking and listening skills will link to presentations by students; particularly within a group and collaborative process. Students will continue to be supplied with reading lists to support the notion of reading for pleasure along with the use of guest speakers and external agencies to support work within the local context.
Ambitious activities are those that take your regular curriculum further. They take the subjects you study in the classroom beyond that which your teacher has taught you or what you’ve done for home learning. For example, you may go into more depth on something you picked up in the classroom or learn about a new topic altogether. These activities are normally in the form of extra reading, but they can take many other forms, like watching videos online, downloading podcasts, attending lectures, visiting museums or entering academic competitions.
In the future, employers or universities will be interested to hear about what ambitious activities you have engaged in; they will be interested in what you have learnt and impressed by your efforts. Click here for further details
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