English- Key Stage 3

English Key Stage 3 Curriculum

We are a community school that teaches our students how to become global citizens. We aim to foster a sense of inclusion and diversity and build motivation through our ambitious and challenging text choices.
We are a truly inclusive school that provides a broad and balanced curriculum. Students will develop independence in the analysis and production of a wide range of written texts.
We prepare our students for their future careers and embed literacy and numeracy into our lessons. Students will receive a solid foundation in communication and the skills that they need to make and build relationships in the outside world.
We deliver Quality First Teaching, bespoke intervention and build our exam strategies to drive academic success. Students will become confident communicators.

Students start their English journey in year 7 as mixed ability classes and remain in these groups throughout KS3. This approach enables us to provide quality teaching to students of all abilities using a curriculum that is accessible to all.
All lessons start with a Do Now Task; a short but challenging independent spaced retrieval activity. This is followed with a “Big Question” which promotes challenge and provides a benchmark for measuring progress. A combination of teacher input (I do), demonstration/modelling (we do) and application (you do) coupled with skilfully used questioning helps assess student understanding and promotes inclusion for all.
Our teachers use extensive modelling to show students what excellent answers look like, unpacking each stage of their thinking and providing success criteria to support students towards self-assessment and independence.

We have created a bespoke curriculum which is linked to the context of the children that we serve in our community. We have created ‘golden threads’ of power and conflict, linking a wide range of themes back to these fundamental ideas that our students face in the real world.
We are actively adapting our curriculum to include a wide range of diverse voices that sit alongside the well-known literary canon so that our students are reflected in the texts that we explore.
Students will continue their progression in Literature and Language by looking at a wide range of fiction and non-fiction texts by reading, analysing, reproducing, and eventually producing texts of their own with increasing levels of complexity.

Students in Years 10 and 11 focus on preparation for AQA GCSE Language and Literature. We choose texts at this level which complement those at KS3 but allow for greater depth: Macbeth, An Inspector Calls, Jekyll and Hyde and the Power and Conflict poetry anthology.
We make our own Language units that reflect current affairs such as crime, protests and working conditions. These engage the students and build their cultural capital by helping them to understand current events.
At KS4, selected students are offered the opportunity to study for Functional Skills to enable them to access Further Education and to supplement their learning.

Targeted intervention and support groups for students in all year groups take place throughout the year. Students are selected to access these groups based on a wide range of factors which include prior ability as well as wellbeing.
We provide enrichment opportunities through theatre visits and guest speakers from the English community.

Mrs Sarah Rossiter – Assistant Principal, Head of English